


the one with the little space farm

by verybadhedgehog



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Bickering, Cooking, Domestic, Exile, Food, Force Ghosts, Humor, Hunting, M/M, Medium Burn, Mild Gore, Oral Sex, Post-Coital Cuddling, a little space farm, canonverse, emotional dumbass kylo ren, kitchen sink kylux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-11-17 14:22:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18100256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verybadhedgehog/pseuds/verybadhedgehog
Summary: The First Order are losing. Kylo is disillusioned and has been having visions, and Hux has already run for his life from an assassination plot. Kylo decides to go and find him and talk to him. The Force guides him to a far away planet, a little farmstead and a very annoyed, red headed farmer…





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [twistedsardonic (sfvamp)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sfvamp/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tide of the war has turned, and things are not going well for the First Order. Kylo Ren is once more beset by mental conflict and struggle, but is guided by the Force to take action.

Kylo Ren had just received bad news. He had taken it more calmly than the officer who brought to to him seemed to have expected — dismissing the man with a brief gesture and barely glancing at him as he left the Supreme Leader’s office and receiving room.

He read over the report again.

A mutiny, on a frigate. With no ships within range to intercept, the ship had been lost.

Though Kylo was angry, he knew he wasn’t angry enough. It seemed futile. What was another desertion, another mutiny to add to the list? He was losing everything, bit by bit — yet didn’t care as much as he should.

If the officers and administrators knew. If the rank and file knew. If the common people knew. Their own leader was — after all this time, after conquest upon conquest, after victory and defeat — having doubts. _Still_ having doubts.

His commitment to the Order and its cause was in question, but he couldn’t mutiny against himself.

He would not speak of this to anyone. Obviously, he wasn’t about to broach the topic with High Command, his trooper guards, or the droid who brought his morning coffee. Rey had no interest in reopening communications, and though she might be persuaded to listen he wouldn't give her the satisfaction of hearing his troubles. He certainly wouldn’t give his ghostly uncle the satisfaction.

He had been having visions.

Visions of his grandfather, wounded and suffering. His grandfather, living with the physical pain and discomfort and sheer bloody hassle of being Darth Vader. Bacta baths, and artificial limbs, and imperfect neural interfaces and phantom pain and pain and _pain_.

Kylo knew he didn’t want that end. He knew as much as he had ever known anything that he didn’t want it. But what did this _mean_ for him? Was Vader’s suffering inevitable? Was it haunting him?

He’d wanted and needed power for so long. And now he had it. He had the experience of having it. Was he supposed to give it up? Act as though it was an action item to be crossed off? Power. Been there, done that. Move on.

There was nowhere to move on _to_. He wouldn’t be going _back_ anywhere. Couldn’t give any of them the fucking satisfaction. Didn’t want to. It wasn’t about that. It wasn’t about any of that at all.

The Force was guiding him. He knew it. He would have to listen to it. He’d been wrong before. It pained him to admit it, but it would pain him more to deny it.

Defeat was on its way. With all his powers, and all the Order’s remaining might, he would not be able to forestall it. It was coming.

Whether through bravery, naivety or conditioning, everyone dutifully pretended it was not.

They would win, they said.

They would push back against the rebels, they said.

The “Free Republican Army” amounted to nothing more than some peasants with looted AT-ATs and proton missile launchers, they said.

Everyone knew these things were not true, but duty obliged them to pretend. To lie. To claim these were not lies.

The officers of First Order High Command were not stupid people — they were by and large competent and intelligent. But they would not be able to steer the First Order from its fate. Kylo knew fate, and destiny. They did not.

The disagreements Kylo had with them were, in his opinion, weak and lacked zest.

Hux would have fought him, properly. But Hux was no longer there. In his visions, they still bickered and debated. In his visions, sometimes they stared at each other, wordlessly. Kylo would wake from sleep, or come to from meditation, feeling a lack of something. Feeling bereft, perhaps.

It was the inherent instability in the higher ranks, perhaps the inherent instability of human nature, that had driven Hux away. A plot against him, which Hux had not been able to stop. Fearing for his life, coward, pathetic, he had fled. Fourteen, fifteen months it had been. He had been presumed by some of the other brass to be dead, and there had been a silly attempt to fabricate false evidence to support the theory. Kylo had seen through that very quickly.

He had disciplined the plotters and moved on. At the time, Hux’s absence had been a practical loss, but one he could deal with. The Grand Marshal had a great deal of knowledge about how the Order worked, and he had been a very good right-hand man, though not entirely trustworthy. The generals and admirals who took on his duties did not match up to his technical capabilities, but they did the job. It wasn’t Kylo Ren’s place to litigate in backstabbing between members of High Command. All he was willing to do was impress upon them the importance of unity, and strongly suggest that they didn’t waste their time on trying to do away with one another. He needed their loyalty — what they felt about each other wasn’t his business.

He was almost entirely sure that Hux hadn’t been actively plotting against _him_. Hux had still borne him a grudge, but he didn’t seem to be engaged in conspiracy prior to his disappearance. Kylo had kept Hux close to assure himself against potential betrayal, and the tactic had worked.

Kylo felt, particularly after these awkward visions, as though he missed him.

The visions continued. Lord Vader, alone in his castle. Kylo himself, wandering through a forest. Hux, standing at the side of a muddy farmer’s field, being cross with him. _That_ was odd. And it had to mean something.

As the visions progressed and the pull and tide of the Force became stronger, Kylo grew ever more sure that he needed to leave this place. His destiny no longer meshed with those of the people around him. He needed to go somewhere he could be entirely alone. Truly alone, not alone-but-surrounded-by-people (be they supposedly well-meaning family, Jedi, or First Order personnel).

He needed, he realised, to find Hux.

The thought lay sharp and heavy in his chest.

He needed to find Hux, and talk to him. Suddenly, it seemed that Hux was the only person, in the whole of the galaxy, who he wanted to talk to. About this or anything. He was not yet entirely sure why.

Maybe Hux would give him some brisk little put-down and make him feel at home in himself again, and then he could go and be on his way, and find the place where he could be himself, on his own, with nobody.

 _Could_ he just walk away again, like he’d walked away from the Jedi temple with blood on his hands and the still-warm dead left behind him?

Kylo already had a few things prepared in case he was required to travel at short notice, either to fight or to exercise his unique abilities. He would take a shuttle. And then he would disappear, steal another ship… and he would be gone.

Then the officers would see if any secret thoughts about finding a new Supreme Leader could be parlayed into reality.

 

***

 

Kylo opened his mind and put his consciousness out into the universe. The Force itself would show him the next step to take. If the next step did involve Hux, as he felt it did, there would be a trace of him. Somewhere.

After hours of meditation, anchored to himself by a thin thread, he finally sensed something. It was him. Out there. Alive. Working. Faint in the Force, very distant, but unmistakably Hux.

He needed to focus in on the sensation. He recalled some of the visions, and that drew him in, towards something. A location. He closed his fist around it.


	2. Day One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo embarks on a journey. He has an unexpected visitor. He arrives at his destination, where the welcome he receives is ambivalent at best.

Kylo kept the Stormtroopers with him in the space station to begin with, having them stand guard outside a business while he incapacitated the store owner and took the things he thought he might need.

It was only once they were back at the command shuttle that he discarded them. They, and his pilots, would probably regain consciousness in an hour or two. And then their problems would begin — but their problems were no longer his.

The docking bays were the perfect place to find a suitable vessel. A ship was chosen, its pilot quickly disposed of. After the tedium of administration and rule, the adrenaline and the joy of killing were fuel to him, and gave him the impetus to go on.

Once out of the space station and away, Kylo tapped in the coordinates of the system where he knew Hux to be. The navicomputer made its calculations and spat out a route.

21 hours.

Twenty-one fucking hours.

Piece of shit class four hyperdrive.

So much for impetus.

The ship he had taken may have been convenient, but it was not fast. Kylo had a lot of time to think. He wasn’t sure if he wanted a lot of time to think.

He’d get there. He’d get to where he was going. He’d be able to have this conversation with Hux. Once they’d talked, there’d be more clarity about what to do next.

Hux had already gone through this, the messy business of leaving everything behind. He’d got away, ditched his shuttle, and disappeared. Somehow he’d gotten from the Dantrok system —where they last had a reference for him — to the distant little place where he was now.

He hadn’t always given Hux credit for being resourceful. But to be truthful, Hux had always had people to do his work for him.

Kylo had to keep moving forwards before he could think of the next step. He knew he didn’t want to look back. The Order would do whatever they saw fit. They would limp on, and sooner or later defeat would come. He felt even more numb than ever about the prospect.

Sitting back in the seat he tried to relax. Later he’d crawl into the ship’s pull-down bunk and have a nap. But for now all he could do was sit there and exist.

Twenty minutes into his idleness, he had the sudden realisation that he wasn’t alone.

He _wasn’t_ alone.

And it wasn’t his uncle come to taunt him again. Instead a man in his forties sat in the copilot’s seat, wearing an unfamiliar dark coffee brown tunic and tabard.

“You’ve seen sense at last,” the man said.

Kylo stared at him, and the man looked him right back in the eyes.

“You know full well who I am.” The man’s expression warned Kylo not to dare deny it.

And Kylo very much _did_ know. As a boy he’d seen an old holo of him as a younger man, and this was how he would have been in middle age, if things had been different. The way he spoke, too, was familiar — probably even more familiar than it should have been.

“Why are you here?” he asked, his mouth a little dry.

“Because I want to be.”

“Why now? Come to gloat? To see me fail?”

“I’m here now,” said Anakin Skywalker, “because now is when you need to hear from me.”

Kylo cursed under his breath. “And why not before? When I’ve begged for help.”

Anakin raised his eyebrows. “Did you know you were keeping me out?”

“Obviously not.”

“It wasn’t my advice you wanted, anyway. Well,” he said, with a half smile. “Here’s the only Darth Vader you’re going to get. Beggars don’t get to be choosers.”

He seemed so damned pleased with himself.

“What exactly were you trying to finish?” Anakin said. “Of what I started?”

“Everything. The galaxy. Get everything into line. Rule everything. Nothing left out.”

“Uh huh.” Anakin leant back in the chair. “And _did_ you?”

Kylo turned away. “More or less. I did rule the galaxy.”

“And now? You’re taking a holiday?”

“Shut up.” Kylo glowered at the apparition. “I suppose Luke will show up next. His turn to gloat.”

“Maybe.”

“None of you will leave me alone.”

“Rey leaves you alone.”

“Well, applaud her for her decency, will you.”

“I do.”

“Oh. I should have fucking known. Is she your chosen one now? Because that works out just great.”

“Ben.”

“Don’t,” Kylo said, wounded and defeated.

“You know it doesn’t work and I know it doesn’t work. We both found out the hard way.” Anakin fixed him with a disturbingly sincere gaze. “ I’m glad you killed Snoke, by the way. Been wanting to tell you.”

Kylo was stuck. Not trapped, but stuck. Stuck not knowing what to say or what to think, or what to feel. He stared at his grandfather’s apparition with hurt and pride and confusion. “Thank you,” he said. That was all he could do.

“You did better than I did.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re better off away from the whole thing. You know it. You know the truth.”

Kylo looked straight ahead, and said nothing.

“If you think I’m wrong, turn this ship around. Set a course to the nearest First Order world.”

Kylo knew he wouldn’t do that. “I have somewhere I need to be,” he said.

“Then go there.”

“I don’t know why I have to be there. But I know it’s right. I have to leave old things behind.”

“It’s a start,” said Anakin.

And then he was gone.

Kylo reached out and touched the empty copilot’s seat. He was really gone.

It had been good to talk to his grandfather. Even though it hadn’t gone the way he wanted. This was very much the Anakin Skywalker who Luke had always talked about — his tales wrapped of course in lies and deceit. But Kylo had found himself wanting to listen to Anakin.

He wondered now what it was that he would have wanted to hear from Darth Vader, at this moment in time. Would it have been any better?

He took a long drink from a water bottle, then headed toward the ship’s bunk. Sleep would kill time. He hoped he wouldn’t dream. The Force was already giving him too much.

 

***

 

Kylo woke with a few hours to go in hyperspace. He’d found a set of chance cards in a compartment behind the cockpit, so with nothing better to do he played a few rounds against himself. Every win a loss, and vice versa.

He decided not to change his clothes, though he’d slept in them. It seemed right to appear before Hux as Hux remembered him.

When the time finally came, the ship took the drop back to normal space with only a few minor rattles, and Kylo pushed on to the planet, towards Hux’s coordinates. He would have only the Force to guide him in this part of the journey. He relaxed into it, trusting his intuitions.

 

***

 

The ship handled pretty well in atmosphere. As he descended, Kylo could see green land, about a third of it cultivated, and patches of woodland. He coasted in, finding a place near the edge of the woods where he could make landfall without much trouble.

He could really sense Hux’s presence now, like a beacon transmitting through the trees. He had never felt or sensed this before — he had never needed to, he realised.

The ship securely locked behind him, Kylo climbed over a fence and into the woodland. The floor of the forest was scattered with white and blue flowers, and all around birds were singing. It was spring here. Mid- to late spring, Kylo thought as he made his way through, picking his way between trees, over stones, and onto a narrow muddy pathway.

After a hundred or so metres, he could see a shape ahead of him at the edge of a wide clearing. It looked like another ship, and as he got closer he saw it was. Bits were missing from it — it was partially scavenged out. A civilian mid-range vessel, Kylo noted. He briefly looked around it. Hux had been here, that much he knew. But had this been his ship, or had he only stolen from it?

Vegetation was starting to grow through a cut out panel. There wasn’t enough growth to suggest the ship had been there more than a year or two, which made it more plausible that it was Hux’s own ship.

The parallel was obvious. He and Hux had had similar plans. They’d left, and then changed ships, begging or stealing some unremarkable civilian vessel. It felt right. Fitting. Nice. They needed to be face to face now. The Force had drawn them both here, and had given them similar paths to reach this place. This was right. Kylo knew it.

He walked on.

 _He’s close by_ , he thought. He didn’t know what they were going to talk about once they finally were face to face. But they were going to talk. His faith in the Force told him so.

There was a proper path now, cutting neatly through undergrowth. Signs of established life. Kylo followed it through a recently repaired gate in another fence. After a couple of turns he saw, a few meters away, a plot of crops in the early stages of growth. All in neat rows. Regimented. These were Hux’s soldiers now.

And just a little further, a building. This was it.

As Kylo got closer, he could see there were two buildings, one a simple arch construction of corrugated steels, and the other a two-storey house in stone.

Hux was here. He’d make himself known very soon. Kylo sensed it.

And there, mere seconds later, he was. Hux, coming out of the stone house with a blaster in his hand. His expression was first shock, then grim determination as he raised his arm and fired.

This was far more commitment than he must have had in the throne room that time. After Snoke’s death.

Kylo flung up an arm, his reactions faster yet than Hux’s, and the blaster bolt froze and hovered in the air between them.

“Hux,” he said.

“Get away from me,” Hux spat, boiling with anger and fear and defiance.

Kylo took a step forward, and saw Hux’s face (his _bearded_ face, he had a _beard_ ) twitch. He took another step, and Hux’s hands dropped to his sides.

“No,” Hux said, to himself. “No. I suppose not.”

Kylo stepped to the side, to move around the frozen bolt of plasma.

“Why you?” Hux asked. “Had to come and kill me yourself?”

“It’s not like that.”

“Had to make it personal? Couldn’t send a squad?”

“That isn’t what I’m here for.”

Hux looked around. “You didn’t bring a squad at all,” he said, suddenly intrigued.

“No.” 

Kylo let the bolt go. It shot harmlessly into the trees. Hux flinched, just very slightly.

“I want to, uh,” Kylo said, and he was suddenly unable to follow it with, _“talk to you.”_ He knew it would sound stupid. He felt the same way he had done when asking Rey to join him. She had double crossed him. The vision had been incomplete and wrong that time. This time, though, this time it was different.

“I came alone,” he said, instead. “I left everyone behind.” _Just like you did._

“Left everyone behind,” Hux echoed slowly.

“I want to talk to you.” Kylo managed to get the words out this time.

“You want to _talk_ to me? Not kill me?”

“No.”

And finally, Kylo dared approach him.

Hux looked good. Rough around the edges, dressed in civilian clothes and short boots, hair loose and longer than it had been. Short, trimmed, beard. He didn’t have quite his old bearing, though Kylo could see he was trying to show some military stiffness. He looked good. Healthy, even.

“You look well.”

“So do you,” Hux said, guarded, wary; and trying, for some reason, to be polite. He looked Kylo up and down again, and seemed to make a decision.

“You’d better come inside. I’m not standing out here.”

Hux wiped the soles of his boots on a rough mat inside a covered porch. “You’ll be cleaning your boots before you come in,” he said. “Use the brush. Supreme Leader.”

Kylo gave a quick sharp glance in reaction, but reined himself in. It seemed there was more behind the comment than mockery.

He brushed the mud from his boots, and Hux led him into a kitchen — simple and plain, but it looked lived in. Kylo tried to scan the room to figure out if it was lived in by one person or more than one. There were two chairs, one by a work table and another near the cooking stove. But it would be very unlike Hux to have a companion.

Hux folded his arms. “Why are you here?”

“I told you.”

“To talk? Talk, then.”

“You were armed and ready,” Kylo said. “Were you expecting me?”

“Expecting you? I saw a ship coming in. Little I could do but wait, with a blaster in my hand.”

Kylo sucked lightly on his lip. “I suppose not.”

He took in more of the kitchen. Basic standard modular fittings and a couple of pieces of rustic furniture, which really didn’t seem like Hux’s taste or the level of refinement to which he’d been accustomed. He moved over to the cooking stove and stood with his back to it, his eyes on Hux.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” Hux said. “But I live in the expectation that I may be tracked down.”

What would that be like, Kylo wondered. He had only ever been the hunter, never the hunted.

Hux met Kylo’s gaze, his pale eyes as scornful and mistrusting as ever. “Where is your ship? Where did you land?”

“Behind the woodland. It’s locked up. And it’s not mine.”

“A thief,” Hux said.

“I saw the piece of trash you came in,” he said. “Couldn’t miss it. Stylish sense of parking, by the way. And clearly not your ship either.”

Hux’s upper lip twitched momentarily.

“Hypocrite,” Kylo said. He leant back against the cooking stove. Warm. “I know why you left,” he went on.

“Do you?”

“You left because there was a plot against you.”

“Yes. Not beyond the wit of common man to divine that, even at the time. And you’ve had plenty of time to find out exactly what happened. If indeed you cared.”

Kylo looked away at a patch of nothing on the floor, and made an effort not to rise to the bait. “Your replacements didn’t do as good a job as you.”

“Oh, so that’s what this is? You’ve come to ask me to come back and run your army for you?”

“No.”

“Then what is your point. Supreme Leader.”

Kylo looked away again.

“I don’t think I have the time for this,” Hux said, though Kylo couldn’t imagine what else was more important. “But I suppose I have no choice but to entertain you. We saw what happened when I tried to see you off.”

“You tried to kill me. That’s what happened.”

“You’d do the same.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“I’ve had enough of this,” declared Hux. “I have things to do.” He looked sharply at Kylo. “So what are you doing? Are you going back to your ship or are you staying there?”

“I’m not going back to my ship. Not yet. I’ll wait for you here.”

“Will you. I shall assume that you won’t rob me or booby-trap my house. I’d rather you didn’t leave this room, in fact.”

Kylo felt a weak smile on his lips.

Hux went back outside, and Kylo watched him from the window, heading towards the outbuilding. The sun was getting low now.

He took the chance to have a better look around Hux’s kitchen. As well as the standard fitments, there were some bits of apparatus that looked like they’d been taken from a ship or a speeder. The plumbing arrangement over the sink looked non-standard, and fairly new. Hux had been keeping himself occupied. Kylo opened a cupboard. Cooking equipment. And another. Boxes and jars of food. So far so normal, though this was not normal for Hux.

There were two doors leading from the kitchen to the rest of the house. One gave onto a lounge, with plain-looking couches and an old fashioned fireplace. The other seemed to lead to an unlit hallway.

Hux would be back in a minute, and not wanting to raise Hux’s suspicions, Kylo took a seat in one of the two chairs.

Indeed, Hux was soon wiping his feet again on the porch mat, and slamming the door.

He opened a cupboard and angrily banged about inside with packets and cans. “I take it I’m expected to feed you,” he said. “Did you bring rations?”

“Rations? There are some standard box meals on the ship. Will it be secure here?”

“If it's locked.”

Hux squatted in front of a low cupboard and pulled out a large, round, root vegetable. “I expect your personal chefs have been furnishing you with who knows what delicacies,” he said. “But don’t expect more than mash here.”

He fetched a peeler, slammed the vegetable down on the table, and sat in the chair. There was no noise except for the scrape of the peeler for a minute or two.

“Poor Hux. You’ve been here all this time with no soldiers to command. No training program to oversee.”

“Yet somehow I seem to be coping,” Hux said.

“Do you do usually all this by yourself?”

“I have a droid. A very old class five agricultural droid. It digs and ploughs, and the like.”

“So you’re not all on your own.”

“It’s a class five, Ren, it doesn’t do conversation. And it’s deactivated at the moment, so you won’t be getting an introduction.”

Amusement twitched across Kylo’s face.

“That’s where I went, you know,” Hux said. “To deactivate the droid. I sent it into the shed when I saw a ship coming. And now it’s you, I can’t take the risk.”

Hux started cutting the vegetable into large chunks.

“Of what?” Kylo asked.

“Of it seeing your face!”

“It sees yours. Though the beard is a nice touch.”

Hux scowled at him. “It knows me as master and that’s all it needs. I don’t want it giving your description to any locals it might happen to see.”

If the droid might see locals, then that meant Hux had visitors here. What was he doing here? What was he doing mixing with people, all the while trying to claim that he and Kylo were at risk of being seen?

It was hard to tell whether Hux wanted him there or not. No, that wasn’t true. Hux did not want him there, and wanted him to be gone. But he also wanted to be hospitable. And he clearly didn’t want Kylo gone enough to actually ask him to leave. How easy it would be for Hux to suggest that Kylo went back to his ship. Yet he hadn’t done so.

Hux filled a large pan with water and set it on the stove. He tipped the chunks of vegetable into the pan, and stood, waiting for it to boil, ignoring Kylo.

Then he looked at Kylo, looked at the pan, then at Kylo again.

“Never going to be enough. Right!”

He stomped back outside, and this time Kylo followed him.

“Potatoes,” Hux said. “Better dig some bloody potatoes to feed you with.”

“I can do that,” Kylo said. “I can help.” It seemed right to make the offer: it would certainly give Hux less reason to turn him away.

Hux looked him up and down, with a frown and a sour expression.

“I’m obviously physically strong and capable,” Kylo said. “So I’ll help.”

“You.”

“Yes.”

“Alright then. Here.” Hux then opened a storage structure attached to the house and took two large farmer’s forks and a basket. He led Kylo to a row of low dark green plants. “Take a fork, and dig up the tubers. Like this —” and Hux demonstrated, putting his fork in the ground and carefully turning over the soil to reveal palm-sized yellowish tubers.

Kylo followed his example, and upturned four of the plants. He hadn’t been expecting to perform manual labour for Hux, and he suspected strongly that Hux gained some smug satisfaction from it, yet he didn’t mind terribly. He could have used his powers to do the job, but it seemed right to do it by hand.

“That is enough, I think,” Hux said.

Kylo bent to put the potatoes into the basket.

“No! Not with your gloves on!”

“Why not?”

“You don’t want to get mud on leather.”

Hux was very much enjoying this — the opportunity to boss Kylo around and tell him what to do. Or the opportunity to boss _anyone_ around and tell them what to do.

“It’s easier to wash the dirt from your hands than it is to wash it from glove leather,” Hux said, as though he were explaining to a young cadet.

“I’ve had worse on these,” Kylo said. But he took the gloves off and tucked them into the top strap of his boots.

The dirt was cool and slightly gritty on his hands. It felt quite good. This was the world, the ground, full of life, where the Force was constantly being created and flowing. More elementary lessons for children, really.

Hux carried the basket back to the house, and Kylo followed. There was something satisfying and familiar about watching Hux at work, even in such an unfamiliar environment, doing such unfamiliar work. Even with the edges of Hux’s military bearing worn off, he still carried himself with an uprightness and a precision that seemed oddly endearing.

Hux stopped at the threshold and carefully brushed the mud from his boots.

“Now you,” he said.

Kylo took the brush and brushed his own boots, again.

“Good. And the fork.”

“Are you training me?” Kylo asked, as he brushed the fork clean of mud.

Hux put the fork back into the tool store.

“If you think you need it.” Hux said, and disappeared inside.

Hux quickly scrubbed the potatoes, cut them in halves, and threw them into the pot with the chunks of vegetable. Kylo washed his hands.

Hux spoke up again. “I don’t know why you’re here, Kylo. I’m frankly outraged that you _are_ here. There’s very little I can do about it, as you proved within ten seconds of my laying eyes on you. So I have to hope you get bored and go away again.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do.”

“I’m not bored yet,” Kylo said.

Hux ignored him for a few minutes. The pan on the stove bubbled and boiled.

“Alright,” he said. “I am curious. How _did_ you come to be here, in this system, on this planet, on this patch of land? I know how _I_ got here and I know I didn’t leave witnesses. How did you track me down? I doubt the locals tipped you off, but I know I can’t trust anyone. ”

“The Force guided me to you.”

“Oh, please.”

“It did. I sensed you.”

“So why in the name of the Emperor’s bones didn’t you come and haul me away months ago? You could have brought a squad of troopers. An audience of officers, if you’d felt like it.”

Kylo fidgeted with Hux’s knife and cutting board. “I didn’t want to find you then. Not in the same way.”

“ _Not in the same way_? What are you talking about? Either you want to know a fact or you don’t. You must have been curious as to my whereabouts.”

“I was. There were spies searching for you initially.”

“Well, they did a shit job of it.” Hux took the cutting board and knife away from Kylo.

“Maybe so. But we had to carry on with who and what we had. Your successors were adequate, up to a point.”

“Up to a point! And don’t tell me who you got to replace me, I don’t think I could take hearing it.”

Kylo knew that some part of Hux was desperate to know. But afraid of finding out.

“Up to the point where we started losing.”

Hux span around. “Losing! How can we be losing?”

Hux was still saying _we_ , Kylo noted. “Troop desertions. More insurgency than we can mop up.”

Hux’s eyes widened. “Desertions! Has someone been making changes to my program?”

Kylo shrugged. “Maybe your troopers were never as loyal as you thought they were.”

“Nonsense. Don’t come here and tell me that.” Hux glared at Kylo. “And what do you mean by more insurgency than you can mop up? How can you be overstretched?”

“It's the proverb of the gadfly and the dewback. He can’t scratch every bite.”

“Well it can’t stand. I take it you’ve come to say you want me back.”

“No.” Kylo swallowed awkwardly. “Not like that.”

“Like what, then?”

“Did you… do you like being here?”

“Do I _like_ it? What sort of question is that?”

“You seem proud of your house.”

“I am.”

Of course he was.

Hux drained and mashed everything, and served it on two large plates — white ceramic with a red floral pattern around the rim. It was food. Kylo ate.

“You still have the appetite of a fathier,” Hux said, as Kylo finished. “This could be a problem.”

Kylo grunted.

“This land only produces so much, you know,” Hux said.

“Do you hunt?”

“I tried small traps. Not with great success.”

“I can hunt.”

“Good for you. I mean, is that supposed to be a long term solution to a long term problem or do you mean to go out and get me a rabbit or a ground bird as recompense for my hospitality?”

“Whatever’s necessary,” Kylo said. And he was fairly sure he meant it. “Get you some meat for these fucking potatoes.”

Hux gave him a withering look. “You’re the Supreme Leader of the Galaxy. I’m here out of necessity and fear for my life, but you don’t need to be tagging along and playing the noble huntsman. This isn’t a story for children.”

“Not Supreme Leader of so much of the galaxy as I was. Like I said, we’re losing.”

“Then what are you _doing_ here?” Hux demanded. “Go back and start winning!” He paused before adding, “You don’t have to flatter me by saying you’d take me back with you, but know that I would serve again at a moment’s notice.”

“It’s not where I belong any more.”

Hux stared at him, aghast. “What are you _talking_ about?”

“I don’t feel the same way as I did.And I keep having visions.”

“Visions,” said Hux, flatly. He picked up the empty plates and took them to the sink.

“Of Lord Vader’s time, and how he suffered. Among other things. I need to talk to you.”

“Any topic in mind?”

“Yes. This. This situation. You’re the only person I found myself wanting to talk to. Because you’d gone.”

“So?”

“I want to know what you felt. When you left, when you ran away.”

“I was running for my life. You aren’t. Are you?”

“No. Not like that.”

After washing up, Hux went and sat in the living room. Kylo followed him.

There was a small fire burning in the grate, and Hux threw one more log onto it.

He sat on one couch and Kylo sat on the other. The couches were very rudimentary, simple wooden boxes with foam mattress on top — Hux had possibly constructed them himself. The pair ignored each other. Kylo knew he was waiting for something to happen, but he didn’t yet know what. All he knew was that he was in the right place for it to happen.

Maybe Grandfather would show up again. Though maybe not right now.

“It’s late and dark,” Hux said, after a while. “I suppose you’re not going back to sleep on your ship.”

“I’d rather not.”

Hux sighed. “You can sleep there. I’ll bring you a blanket.”

“Thank you.”

“I should show you where everything is,” Hux said. “As you know, I have water plumbing, and heat. Back through the kitchen, through the other door in the porch, is a toilet and washbasin. So you don’t have to traipse upstairs to the full refresher facilities and disturb me.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll fetch that blanket.”

 

***

 

The blanket was big and plain and a little rough, not dissimilar to old Imperial army issue.

Kylo went to piss, then washed his hands and face. There was no mirror above the wash basin, and he felt slightly relieved at that. He didn’t want to catch his own reflection and have to start asking himself any more questions.

Upstairs, Hux must be getting ready for bed too. Kylo wondered what his bedroom was like. Plain and tidy. His bed was probably comfortable and warm.

As that thought crossed his mind he sensed him again. Worried, but not afraid. That was a positive. Hux had often been unafraid of him, and that was something.

 

***

 

When Kylo woke in the night, he’d been dreaming about him. They’d been walking down a long corridor on the Star Destroyer _Finalizer_ , like in the old days. But there had been something odd about it. They had been too close. And he’d just been about to say something, or do something.

He couldn’t remember what it was, even though he’d only just woken from the dream.

“Hux,” he whispered. He looked up at the ceiling, all vaguely grey in the faintest foresight of morning twilight. He was up there. So close.

The Force had brought him here. And it had not yet fully divulged its reason why.


	3. Day Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo helps out on the farm, and contributes to dinner (content note: hunting and butchery)

Kylo was woken early by the clucking and squawking of hen birds, soon followed by the tread of feet on wooden stairs.

“You’re still here.”

Kylo sat up. “Yes. I’m still here.” 

He fixed Hux with a level stare, but Hux did not even have the decency to look vaguely intimidated. Merely put upon and annoyed. “I was hoping and dreaming that you might have folded your blanket and fucked off,” he said.

Kylo ran his hand through his hair. “It’s early. Do you still keep ship’s time?”

“No. The chickens need feeding.” And with that, Hux was away into the kitchen and out the back door.

Kylo folded his blanket, pulled on his boots and followed him outside. The chickens were clucking with enthusiasm as Hux threw handfuls of grain over a short wire fence. Once their heads were down and they were busy eating, Hux climbed into the enclosure, scissoring his long thin legs over the fence, and began looking for eggs.

“Eggs,” Hux said. “Since you seem so fascinated.”

Kylo looked around. A chicken run. A big corrugated metal shed, or barn, or whatever it was. Plots of land. “So this is your homestead?” he said.

“It is.”

“How did you come to possess it? You obviously didn’t build it; it’s old.”

“I bought it, actually.”

“With what?”

“With _money_ , Ren.”

“With expropriated First Order funds.”

“Yes.” Hux looked at him levelly. “A deserter _and_ a thief,” he said.

“You think I'm going to do something about that?”

Hux said nothing.

Kylo shrugged. “I don’t want to do anything about it.” He looked around again, at house and outbuilding and land. “I’m interested to hear about it.”

“Interested? You think you have the right to be interested in what I do here?”

This was the old spark and fire of Hux.

“I can see you’ve made improvements,” Kylo said.

“Yes. I made improvements.”

“Tell me about them. I know you like to report your achievements.”

Hux sighed. “I brought in a new power hub. From my ship, which was out of commission. Improved the hot water provision. And I am working on and developing the land. As you can see perfectly well.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you, without teams of men to boss around.”

“Well, I’m glad to have surprised you,” Hux said, a little acidly.

The shed, or barn, had two sliding up-and-over doors, and Kylo wondered what was behind them. Some sort of vehicle, probably. The yard droid that Hux had mentioned. He’d get Hux to show him around, eventually.

“How did you choose this place?”

“I ended up here,” Hux said, turning back to the house with his basket of eggs. “One of a few options. This system being no longer under our control made it paradoxically safer.”

Kylo followed him inside. “That’s not a paradox, Hux. That’s common sense, for a fugitive.”

“Fuck off. I know it is. I was simply saying.”

“You waved a handful of credit chips around, and found yourself a suitable little estate. How you fall on your feet.”

“Fall on my feet?” Hux said, seemingly livid again. “I was running for my life! It was only my quick thinking and action that got me here.”

“You like to flatter yourself.”

Hux gave Kylo a burning glare. “How _dare_ you,” he said.

Kylo found Hux’s anger and indignation familiar, and thus oddly reassuring.

It was fair to say though, that Hux could be justifiably proud of having made something of this place. Perhaps Kylo should be more charitable. The interesting thing was how different it all was from the world they’d both inhabited. This little farm, as proud as Hux was of his refurbishments and tinkering, was surely inconsequential compared to the full military of the First Order.

“Do you miss everything?” Kylo asked.

Hux said nothing but turned and walked out, into the hallway.

“I don’t,” Kylo said softly. “ _I don’t_.”

He didn’t. At least not yet, he told himself. He didn’t miss having armies at his command. At least not yet. He didn’t miss the throne, and the ever narrowing sphere of influence. He missed everything else. Everything he’d ever turned his back on or that had ever made him weak.

Hux, though, surely missed having men to command. He surely missed his status.

Kylo followed Hux this time, into the hallway. There was a staircase, an external door, and a window. The door must be the front door of the property, he realised. Everything was whitewashed and plain.

“Grand Marshal,” he tried.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” came Hux’s voice from the other end of the hallway, past the staircase.

“Why not?”

“I don’t care to be taunted.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to hear it. Not from you, not ever.”

“What if it were true?”

“Ren,” Hux said. “I don’t have time for this. I just don’t.”

Kylo could hear Hux's voice slightly cracking.

He went back into the kitchen, and contemplated the basket of eggs.

After a couple of minutes, Hux returned, and seemed to have calmed himself. He put four eggs to boil, leaving Kylo wondering if he boiled everything he ate. Then he fetched out some dense-looking bread and cut slices.

“Tea?” he offered.

“I don’t like your tea.”

“It isn't ‘my’ tea. You think I can get Tarine Black here? It's standard brew.”

“All right then. Tea.”

Hux flicked a switch on a water boiler. “It's in the round caddy. Mugs are over there.”

Kylo gave him a look, but did as required with mugs and tea leaves.

The eggs tasted good, with a dab of salt. Kylo watched Hux eat his, too, out of the corner of his eye, watched him wipe away egg yolk crumbs from his beard. Like a neat, fastidious little animal.

Hux, through narrowed eyes, watched Kylo take and eat another slice of bread. “Ugh, you’re absolutely going to eat me out of house and home,” he said.

“You have money that you brought with you. Some principle against spending it on food?”

“Of course not. I go to the village and purchase essentials, like any of the people here do. But I have a budget, and my capital funds aren’t to be run down.”

“How near is the village? I saw something in the valley as I came in.”

“Four kilometres. It’s a very basic place. Backward really. But some elements of trade.”

“You’ve changed your face. But might you not still be recognised?”

“It’s backward enough here that they don’t know big names and faces very well. I’d have thought it a scandal at one time, but it’s been rather useful.” He sipped his tea. “Doesn’t mean I trust them with your great ugly mug, though.”

“You look a little different, to the uneducated eye,” Kylo said. “But not so different to me.”

“Of course not to you,” Hux said, and rolled his eyes.

Kylo looked at Hux, at his short, trimmed beard, and thought. “You came here straight away?”

“Yes.”

“Would have taken you weeks to grow that,” Kylo said. “And if they didn’t know you when they _first_ saw you, clean shaven…”

“Quite.”

“Same goes for me, though. These peasants, they probably only know the mask.”

“It’s not like you’ve _never_ made barefaced appearances. I’d still rather not risk it. With two of us showing our faces, someone might start making connections. They’re rustic, Ren, not congenitally stupid.”

Hux started washing up.

“Tell me about this budget of yours,” Kylo said.

“I have income and outgoings.”

“Income?”

“Income. I work.”

“You have a job?”

“I have a workshop — you saw the big shed at the back. I take in machines for repair.”

Kylo nodded. It sounded about right.

“And I tutor some young people from the village and the surrounding area.”

“You’re a _schoolmaster_?”

“No, a _tutor_. There _is_ a schoolmaster who gives the local children a basic education up to age fifteen — or just thirteen if they’re needed on the farms. I give tutoring in engineering mathematics, for college entrance examinations.”

“Fascinating.”

“They may be too old to be programmed, but they’re not too old to learn.”

Kylo cared little about Hux’s teaching philosophy. The practicalities were what interested him. “So you’re actually known in the area. Better known than if you’d simply purchased a plot of land and lived as a hermit.”

“Yes. Not exactly the heart and soul of the village, but known.”

“What do they know of you? Given that they don’t recognise you, who do they believe they’re dealing with?”

“They know I’m a clever man who is good at fixing things, and my ship crashed and I took shelter in this house and decided to stay, and bought the land.”

“That’s rather bare bones. They must suspect more of you. The way you carry yourself, for one thing.”

“I told them I’d been a technician on a Star Destroyer. They were impressed by that.”

Kylo snorted. “Some are easily impressed.”

“They’ll have seen another ship landing, you know.” Hux said. “There’ll be questions asked about it.”

“And how do you plan to answer them?”

“Not sure. Depends how long you linger, doesn’t it?”

Kylo skirted the topic. He didn’t know how long he was going to stay, and he didn’t want to be pressed on it. “Will they investigate, your village friends?”

“I’ll be down there tomorrow, so any questions will come up then, I believe. And I have a tutorial with my students after that.” 

“You’d best come up with a cover story. A friend coming to visit.”

“A friend! Well, luckily it’s not me I’m trying to convince, it’s them.”

“Of course.”

“Right,” said Hux. “Now we have work to do.”

“Do we?”

“I’m not reactivating my droid just yet,” Hux said. “You’re imposing on me, so I should think it’s the least you could do. Last night you were all too keen to play the helpful guest.”

Kylo looked out of the window. “What do you need done?” he asked.

“Long leeks need planting out. Which entails turning the soil and digging some holes, at first.”

Kylo nodded. “I’ll dig holes.”

Hux gave him a critical up-and-down look. “Are you planning on wearing that, still? You’ll get frightfully muddy. Do you have other clothes?”

“I brought some things. But they’re—”

“In your ship. Never mind.” Hux sighed, and left the kitchen.

He returned with an old worn shirt. “Big for me, might fit you,” he said. He was wearing something similar, and it was odd to see the First Order’s neat and pressed Grand Marshal in such rough rustic clothes.

Kylo held the shirt up. It might fit. He unfastened his tunic and took it off, leaving it folded on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. The shirt was a little tight on the chest, but it would do, if he didn’t tie the top fastening.

He went back to the sitting room, picked up his lightsaber from where he’d hidden it, and clipped it to a loop at the waist of his trousers. Unlikely it would be needed, but he wasn’t comfortable leaving it inside.

Hux was waiting in the kitchen. Kylo followed him outside again, took the necessary tools and instruction, and started on the work. It was supposed to be demeaning. He knew that. But somehow it wasn’t.

Hux brought pots of plants on a tray and, his movements neat and measured, transferred them into holes in the ground that Kylo dug.

“Do I match up to your droid?” Kylo asked.

“More or less.”

Hux fetched an irrigation hose and watered the leeks in. He stood back, straight and proud, and gazed upon his row of cultivation. “Good. Don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Kylo said. “I suppose so.” He mopped his brow with the back of his sleeve. “Where did you learn all this farming and gardening? Not a topic you had interest in before, as far as I know.”

“As far as _you_ know,” Hux said. “You wouldn’t have had any idea what I might or might not have been interested in.”

Kylo rolled his eyes.

“I did some research. Taught myself. You can get data books on anything, you know.”

“Did you get one on hunting?” Kylo said. “I meant what I said last night. I’ll find you some meat.”

“Alright. I’ll take you up on that. Before, though, you’re going to show me where your ship is — I need to be sure it’s on my land and not someone else’s.”

“Come with me, then.”

Hux took the lead as they walked through the woodland. Soon they came to Hux’s own downed vessel.

“Good piloting,” Kylo said, and sensed Hux’s offended reaction. “A KB-411, huh. So where did you get it?”

“That’s for a formal court-martial. Not for you.”

Kylo sighed. “You won’t have a formal court-martial,” he said wearily. Hux flinched, and Kylo regretted his phrasing. “I’m not here to drag you back. I would have sent a team for that.”

“And aren’t I flattered for the personal attention.”

They went on through the trees to Kylo’s ship.

“Ah, no problem,” Hux said. “That’s on my land, so no one else can bother me about it.”

“Good.”

“My land, by the way, Ren, stretches as far as the top of that little hill, and then down around the corner, to the east.”

“I see. That's nice.”

“I let a lady from the valley graze her nerfs on it in summer. For rent, obviously.”

“Uh huh.”

“Thinking of getting a few nerfs of my own,” Hux said. “Though they’ll need another barn.”

He really was fully engaged in this whole farming business.

“My father was a champion nerf breeder,” Hux continued. “Had a stock man to raise them, though.”

“And here it’s all you and your little droid.”

“Quite.”

“I’m going to find you something in these woods. I have my lightsaber, though I may not need it.”

“Well, I shall leave you to it. Don’t be too long if you can help it.” And off Hux went. 

Kylo needed to clear his mind before he could hunt. The thing that was bothering him was Hux, and his attitude. Hux’s attitude had always been a problem, to be fair, but it had always been one particular kind of problem. Now, it seemed to be self-contradictory and in flux. Hux had been initially hostile, but had invited him in and let him stay. He had been angry to have been addressed by his title, and then quite happy to do yard work alongside Kylo. And now, though he'd turned around and gone without showing much interest in Kylo’s ship, or wanting to see inside it, he wanted Kylo to hasten back.

Perhaps Hux had been lonely here on his own. Though on the face of it, he couldn’t have been nearly as lonely as one might have imagined. He knew people in the village, on at least passing commercial terms. He had students who he was instructing. Perhaps, though, Hux did want someone to talk to. Someone with whom he shared some common ground.

Kylo had come here for the right reasons, he decided. All would make itself clear. He would meditate, and see what new awareness came to him.

He sat on a wide moss-covered rock, quietened his mind, and breathed deeply.

He felt more distant from the world of before than he ever had. His first life had already been over for several years, and its memories were detached and impersonal. Mostly. The meeting rooms and corridors and bridges of starships of his second life also seemed distant and detached now. Shiny black walls, very far away. Obedient officers in neat uniforms, very far away. Power and military might; all far away and seeming irrelevant, compared to the power that was inside him. That was the only truth. The Force was in him, and it was its own truth.

Now he could do what he was here to do. He extended his awareness through the trees and onto the land, picking up the Force signatures of animals and birds. The signature of one animal rose above the rest, and he sensed it close by. He turned around, slowly and quietly, and focused, then reached out with the Force and grasped the animal, holding it tightly in place. The animal incapacitated, he could investigate, and see what he had found.

It was a creature rather like a very large long-legged rabbit, with long ears and short horns. Definitely edible. Hux ought not to turn his nose up at this.

Kylo rendered the animal unconscious, then went to it and snapped its neck. He picked it up by the back legs to carry it back to the house. As he walked back past the rock where he’d been meditating, the animal hanging limply from his fist, he realised he suddenly had company again.

“Been hunting?”

“As you see.”

“Horned hare. Not bad,” Anakin said. “You’ll get two dinners out of that. At least.”

“I used the old Sith ways.”

“Yeah, I saw. Not much sport to it,” Anakin said, with a wry and glowing grin. “Could have crept up on it with a blaster, got a good shot.”

“It’s not for sport. It’s for the pot.”

“I’m only teasing. He’ll be pleased with that.”

“Do you think?”

“Of course he will. He’s not used to gifts, is he?”

“Why do you say that?”

“I can tell.”

“He’s used to having thousands at his beck and call. And the finer things in life.” Kylo looked at the animal. “This’ll be an improvement on last night’s dinner, though. So, yes, he’ll be pleased, I suppose.”

“You don’t follow me,” Anakin said. “He’s not used to _gifts_.” 

“Hmm. I suppose we’ll see.”

Anakin faded, with a smile and a lazy gesture that Kylo supposed was some sort of salute.

 

***

 

Kylo brought back the hare. Hux would have sharp knives to skin and joint it with.

“Hey,” he said.

“Oh. There you are. And what do you have there? A horned hare?”

Kylo held the animal up for Hux to look at. “I caught it at the edge of the wood. Do you have a pot big enough, if we cut it in pieces?”

“Yes, I do.” Hux nodded and seemed rather pleased.

“And a sharp knife to skin and joint it with.”

“Yes, yes. But you’ll be doing that out here. I don’t want all blood and mess on my kitchen table.”

“Of course not.”

Hux brought the knife, and watched Kylo skin and butcher the hare.

“Fur hat for winter?” Kylo said, as he cast the hare skin aside.

“No thank you,” said Hux. “You can keep it for yourself. You’d make a fine barbarian king, I’m sure.”

Kylo snorted, and pulled out the creature’s guts.

“Where did you learn this? Did you and your Knights feed yourselves like this?”

“Sometimes. Bring me a bowl for the bits — the organs.”

Hux brought a bowl and he deposited the animal’s kidneys, liver, heart and lungs in it.

“Your hands don’t get as dirty as I’d have thought,” Hux said.

The animal’s blood had pooled inside its visceral cavity. Kylo picked the carcass up and carefully poured the blood into the bowl. “Waste not, want not,” he said.

“That’s an Arkanisian thing, you know, using the blood. I think they do it here too.”

“So you do know about cooking. Could have fooled me last night.”

“I know a little.”

Kylo jointed the animal. “There’s enough for a stew, a roast, and two loins for frying. You have room in your conservator?”

“Yes. Plenty.”

“So, what do you want for your dinner? I’ll help make it.”

“Well, I’m not sure, Ren.” He looked the meat over. “Those loins look rather nice.”

He was quietly impressed. And grateful. Kylo could sense it. Grandfather had been right.

“What do you have to go with it?”

“Winter carrots. And some new greens are just about ready. I suppose they could be picked for the Supreme Leader.”

Those words were somehow easier to hear after the meditation he’d done in the wood.

“Any wine?”

“Wine! You’ve been here less than a day and you’re demanding wine.”

“To soak the meat in, for our stew, tomorrow.”

“I do have some wine, as it happens. They make it further down the valley. Had some bottles given to me in part payment for fixing a chap’s speeder.”

“Herbs?”

“There! By the door.”

 

***

 

Hux insisted that Kylo go and wash.

The fresher was at the top of the stairs (“top of the stairs, door facing you, you can’t miss it”). The fitments were plain, but more sophisticated than the very basic facilities downstairs. Kylo could see new piping leading from a powered water heater, with a simple control panel, on which he set the water temperature to what he considered appropriate for his shower.

A toothbrush in a glass and a round cake of soap in a dish sat on the windowsill above the washbasin. In a mirrored cupboard, Kylo found a small selection of bottles, a comb and a pair of scissors. He decided that he would follow Hux’s example, and not shave. It would be an experiment. He frowned at himself in the mirror, and poked at his top lip with his forefinger.

After washing body and hair, Kylo dressed again in his own black tunic. The shirt Hux had lent him would need to be laundered. He would mention it to him.

 

***

 

They ate the two loin pieces of the hare, fried in butter, with potatoes, boiled and buttered carrots, and the spring green leaves wilted in the pan the hare was cooked in; and drank wine from glass beakers.

It was good — and it was quite obvious that Hux thought it all delicious.

Kylo left the legs of the horned hare to marinade in the rest of the wine, with a handful of herbs. He’d remind himself of how the stew ought to be made tomorrow. Perhaps Hux knew some Arkanisian recipe he was keeping secret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kylo kills a small mammal, by using the Force to first incapacitate it, then strangle it. He then butchers the carcass while Hux watches, and there is explicit discussion of viscera and blood.


	4. Day Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo helps on the farm and in the workshop, and makes dinner. Hux lets him.

Kylo stayed on the property while Hux took his speeder into the village “to collect some things.” Hux clearly did not entirely trust him yet. He had locked him out of the house; leaving him with a list of tasks and a small ration of bread and cheese.

There was definitely something amusing about being treated like this.

Kylo dug the ditches he’d been asked to dig, and made strengthening repairs to the fence that kept animals out of the vegetable garden. After, he stretched to put his muscles back into shape, and ate his snack.

Hux would not be back from the village for a little while.

He had left the workshop part of the barn unlocked, and Kylo familiarised himself with the things inside. There was a welding torch, and a rack of old tools. Next to them there was another full set of standard maintenance equipment that looked to have been taken from a starship. Everything was neatly laid out and in good condition. This must be another way that Hux had spent his lonesome days. Digging in the ground, and polishing his tools. Like a happy little peasant.

To the south of Hux’s land, there was another field that hadn’t been given over to cultivation yet. Too full of stones, Hux had said. That was a problem easily fixed, and Kylo set off to fix it.

He passed by the south facing wall of Hux’s little house which had been augmented with a ramshackle lean-to structure made of glazing and bits of metal. Inside, there were pots, with plants growing.Kylo noticed a board propped up against the wall with what looked like a written and tabulated schedule. What Hux had done for Starkiller Base, he was trying to do for these peas and beans and carrots.

Kylo stood at the edge of the field, relaxed himself, and sent his perception out into the ground. He felt and sensed the rocks as their own entities, felt and sensed the weight of them, and knew each one individually before he exerted that secret pressure that had them lifting from the ground, the soil crowning around them as they rose. He let them float easily to the far side of the field and piled them up in a heap. Perhaps Hux might like to build a wall with them.

“Lifting rocks,” came the voice from behind him. “The easiest things are the most rewarding, sometimes.”

Kylo turned around. “You,” he said.

“You used to think yourself a bit too good for the gardening,” Luke said.

“Not always.”

Luke looked around and folded his arms. “This might be doing you good,” he said. “Where’s the farmer? Gone to market?” He put a rather unnecessary tone on the word _farmer_.

“Yes.”

“It’s done him good. You think that too, don’t you?”

Kylo nodded. “I do.”

“This isn’t what I would have had in mind, Ben. But it might be none the worse for that.”

When Kylo turned around, Luke was gone again.

Kylo clenched his fists and breathed carefully.

He went back to the workshop. The workshop too, could be too full of ghosts if he let it. Uncle Chewie. Mother and father, arguing and mending and talking about the old days. And, strangely, Rey, too, tinkering away in the desert, secretly.

Perhaps she would have been a better friend for Hux. Her. Stealing _everything_ from him. He cursed her, and tried to gather himself. This sort of self-indulgence wasn’t what he was here for.

He sat down on the floor next to the tool case, and began a meditation.

He would start by feeling the flow of the Force, and then he would feel his own power, and he would feel the strength at his own core. He knew that was all he had to trust in now.

There was still an emptiness. He wanted to close it, to fill it. _Digging holes to fill holes_ , he thought, then dismissed the thought. He sat silently, feeling the shape of his mind around that missing something, for several idle minutes, until he heard Hux’s speeder.

He stood to meet him.

“Ah,” Hux said. “You’re in the right place.”

“Are we going to be repairing things?”

“We are. First of all, a micro-condenser unit. I think it’s either a broken plate or a simple loose connection. Should be easy. And second, this. Come and look.” He hopped off the speeder and stood by the carry unit at the back.

Kylo followed and peered in. “What is it?”

“It’s a mechanical seed-thresher with an electronic control panel.”

“Looks rather primitive.”

“That’s because it is,” said Hux. “Do you think you could help me with it?”

“Seems to me that what you need is an astromech.”

“That would be helpful. But I only have a very basic class five. We have our wits and some tools.”

Kylo puffed out his cheeks in a sigh.

“What? Is it too lowly and menial for you?”

“No.”

“Then we can get on with it. Can’t we.”

The fix on the micro-condenser was as straightforward as Hux had predicted. All it needed was a fresh capacitor and a hard reset.

The old farm machine, when removed from Hux’s speeder, looked rather wobbly at one corner.

“Makes a terrible noise in operation, I’m told.”

“Not surprised.”

“Let’s see what we can fix in that suspension.”

The machine was soon braced with two clamps and a fully tightened hydrospanner. Hux reconnected what needed to be reconnected, bolting it together.

He tried moving the lower assembly as it would in normal operation. It still squeaked. “Something’s badly aligned, still.”

“I might be able to sense it.”

“Sense it?”

“Do that again,” Kylo said. He extended his hand.

Hux wiggled the lower assembly again. “I can tell what it is, Kylo, I don’t need your mystic insights.”

Kylo felt a pout starting to develop on his face.

“I think a dab of lubricating gel-oil on the joint should tell us for sure,” Hux said. He took a can of the substance and administered a squirt onto the relevant area.

It was clear how proud and satisfied Hux was, doing this work. His busy hands now had work calluses on them, from this work and the farm work. What a difference from the man Hux had been. A manager, giving orders and checking files, with clean soft hands hidden away under clean soft gloves.

“Ah yes. This means we ought to try to replace this joint casing.”

“Vibration dampener gone?”

“Yes,” Hux said, seemly pleasantly surprised by Kylo’s actual practical knowledge. “Not sure how we’ll replace it. Getting parts is a nightmare.”

“Can’t call down to the ship’s stores and get a junior officer to run and fetch for you,” Kylo said wryly. “Can’t put an order in with the fabrication shop.”

“No,” Hux said. “If I had a piece of polyplast I could turn it.”

“You have a turning lathe?” Kylo laughed in surprise before he realised what he was doing. His guard was down.

Hux had noticed it, had obviously noticed it, and was looking at him oddly. “What’s so funny about that?”

“Nothing. It’s the whole situation,” he said, still amused. “Here you are in the back of beyond, equipped with all these tools, keeping yourself busy.”

Hux shrugged. “If you say so.”

This was the most pleasant conversation, or interaction of any sort, that they’d ever had.

“So what were you up to when I was gone?”

“Sorted your lower field. Got the stones out.”

“Oh! Really? I should take a look.”

Hux sounded genuinely pleased. He rolled down the sliding door of the shed, and they walked together to the lower field.

Hux inspected the results, and the pile of stones. “Oh, I see. That _is_ a good job. Take it you used your powers?”

“Of course.”

“Well, well. Might have liked to have seen that.”

“You take an interest now. Always so dismissive before.”

“You could have got a hoe and dug it over,” Hux said, unable to resist the urge to find fault.

Kylo gave him a look. “Get the fucking droid to do it.”

Hux sighed in mild exasperation. He had his hands behind his back in a sort of parade ground stance.

“I didn’t come here to do your work for you,” Kylo said.

“Yet you offered.”

Kylo had nothing to say to that.

“Whatever you came here for — I mean you _are_ going back, aren’t you?” Hux said. He didn’t exactly sound eager to get rid of Kylo, or eager to have him stay.

“Not yet. Not decided.”

“You have to go back and lead the people. You know I’d come with you.”

“It’s not why I’m here.”

“Ren.”

“It’s not for you to give me orders.”

“If I were in your place—”

“You’re not—”

“The people need a leader. The people and the Order find themselves, for the second time in three years, without a ruler! Don’t you owe it to them?”

“I don’t know.”

“For the first time in your _life_ , Kylo, can you not think of someone else before yourself and your peculiar bloody whims?”

“That’s — no, fuck you, Hux. Fuck you.”

And Kylo turned and strode away into the trees.

 

***

 

Kylo tired of the effort of sulking after less than five minutes of kicking rocks.

He had already done enough that day. And really, he shouldn’t be expecting any better of Hux than barbs and spite and demands. No matter how pleasant their cooperation had been, or how he had, with his guard down, been tempted to feel momentarily happy and (relatively) carefree.

He knew he had to go back to the house, to get the dinner started. The stew would take a good three hours to cook. Obviously, Hux could go and fuck himself and suck on a plain boiled potato while he was doing it, but Kylo rather fancied another meal of the meat that he had killed, and butchered, by his own hand.

 

***

 

When Kylo returned to the house, he found Hux in the kitchen, kneading bread. There was an amount of violence involved, which Hux seemed to be enjoying. He smiled to himself at the sight of Hux’s narrow sloping shoulders and thin arms giving it their all with the dough.

“I thought you must make your own.”

“Yes. I do,” Hux said, and wiped his hands on his apron. (He was wearing an _apron_ and Kylo was far too fascinated by that to be particularly annoyed with him any more).

“I need to start cooking the stew,” Kylo said.

“Let me put this to rise and clear away, first”.

“You have Holonet here?” Kylo asked, as Hux tidied.

“Patchy.”

Kylo took the hare legs from the conservator. “You have recipe books?”

“Some.”

Hux fetched his datapad and Ren waited, with the hare legs in their marinade.

“What do I look for?”

“Jug jackalope. Or whatever they call it on Arkanis.”

“I thought you knew how to make it.”

Hux found a recipe, and Kylo decided it seemed right. “Carrots and round onions,” he said, and Hux provided them from a basket.

“You cutting these up or am I?”

“You have more than one knife,” Kylo said. And so they shared the task.

He took the legs from their herb-fragranced marinade and fried them in butter, then fished them out with a gesture and set them on a plate. Next he added the vegetables to the pan and got them cooking. The legs and vegetables went into Hux’s big pot, and the marinade too.

“Which is the cool oven?”

“Bottom right.”

The pot was covered and went into the oven.

“Now we wait.”

“Three hours, according to the book.”

“I can keep myself busy till then.”

“And then we do things with blood and liver?”

“Yes.”

“I wonder if it’ll remind me… no, probably not.”

 

***

 

Kylo’s bag was still stowed in a locked compartment on his ship. He went to fetch it.

He checked what was inside, though he knew nobody had been in here. Clothes: some taken from Security Bureau stock, and others stolen from a spaceport vendor. He wouldn’t have to wear the same borrowed shirt every day. The secret box was there, too, safe and sound for an eventual trip to Endor. But that was a few steps down the line. He hadn’t finished with this place yet

He carried the bag back to the house. The chickens clucked at him as he went by.

The bag went by the side of the couch he slept on. Hux would comment on it. Kylo would let him do that. Hux enjoyed complaining, Kylo realised.

Of course, he’d still be living out of the bag, still folding up the spare blanket every morning and keeping it neatly at the side of the couch.

Still sleeping on the couch.

But, by virtue of having brought his belongings in with him, sleeping in the house, eating in the house, contributing to the household, he had moved in.

You didn’t move in, in the military. You were posted. You were allocated a bunk if you were rank and file, or a lodging if you were an officer. Maybe the whole idea of moving in would seem foreign to Hux. Maybe he would see it as Kylo having commandeered a spare bunk in the facility. And since Kylo outranked him, he had to accept it.

 

***

 

Hux had been fussing away in the workshop when Kylo came to tell him the next phase of the cooking process was about to begin. Now he stood by in the kitchen ready to supervise.

Using the Force, Kylo took the cooking pot out of the oven.

“Don’t you dare drop that,” Hux said.

Kylo gently placed the pot onto the stove top, and turned around to Hux. “I can, if I so choose, unrack and launch a TIE fighter, without touching it, while standing on the fighter bay deck. You do realise that, don’t you?”

Hux’s lip twitched.

Kylo took the cooked hare legs out and put them on a plate.

“I suppose you aren’t dirtying a spoon,” Hux said.

Kylo grunted.

“What? Do you want me to express some sort of wonderment? By your own token, it’s hardly a TIE fighter, is it?”

Kylo mashed up the vegetables in the juices with the masher Hux had used on the neeps and potatoes on the first night, then scraped the meat from the bones and put the meat back into the pot.

“Clean bowl.”

“What for?”

“Mash up liver and blood separately.”

“So you aren’t saving much washing up, are you.” Hux provided the bowl, and Kylo chopped and mashed the animal’s liver, and mixed it with the blood.

“Now it’s stew to blood, and not blood to stew?”

“Says so.”

“For temperature, I suppose.”

Kylo did as the recipe said, introducing a ladle of stew to the blood and liver, and then slowly stirring the whole mess into the stew. It thickened up into a rich brown velvet.

“Well that certainly looks hearty,” Hux said.

“It’ll be good for you.”

Kylo washed out the bowl and masher, to Hux’s muted appreciation, and ladled the stew onto two plates. Hux cut bread, and they ate with spoons. The stew was thick and rich and delicious.

“This is really very good, you know,” Hux said.

“It is.”

“How do you know how to cook?”

“Seen it done. And I learnt a little.” He didn't want to say too much about the Organa-Solo household, with its succession of kitchen droids, who young Ben would watch at their work, or about Chewbacca teaching him to make the hot and pungent Wookiee soups and hotpots.

“It would be unjust if I didn’t thank you. So, thank you.”

“So am I earning my keep?”

“I should say so.”

That satisfied Kylo.

“I should have mentioned,” Hux said, as he tidied up, “but tomorrow morning you’ll have to make yourself absent for about an hour.”

“Why? What's happening?”

“Two of my students—”

“Your _students_!”

— “Two of my students are unable to have their session in the usual venue, and so I will be tutoring them here.”

“You didn't tell me you had tutoring sessions here in the house!”

“I don't usually. It's a one-off. Sibel’s father is having something done to their house and it’s all upside down apparently, so I offered to host for this week,” Hux said, trying to sound breezy.

“And what am I meant to do?”

“Hole yourself up in your ship. Go hunting, if you like it so much. But I don't want you around.”

Kylo frowned at Hux. “People know there’s someone here, don’t they?”

“ They have an idea, yes. But I don’t want them getting too nosey, or seeing you, or stars forbid wanting to be _introduced_ to you.”

Kylo shook his head. “Fine. _Fine_.”

“The appointment is at ten-thirty.”

“I’ll be gone by ten. I have little choice.”

 

***

 

That night Kylo dreamt they were sitting at a table laid with food and fine wine. It was the sort of extravagant spread that Uncle Lando would have laid on if he was trying to impress. Kylo was offering Hux all sorts of delicacies, but he would only pick at them.

There was nothing wrong with Hux’s appetite in real life. Was it meant to be discouraging?

There was some reason why he would turn down Kylo’s offers. Kylo tried to think about it. What had gone well, and what had gone badly? It seemed things had gone better when they’d been working side by side. Kylo had liked that.

_Digging holes to fill holes, and mending to make whole._

That was something. That was something important.

_You were at my right hand, but we were never truly side by side._


	5. Day Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux's students come for their tutorial. Kylo and Hux have some important conversations.

Hux laid out bread, preserves and eggs for breakfast. He had even got some caf for Kylo, which Kylo found at least drinkable.

At they ate, Kylo noticed Hux fidgeting nervously with his hands — clearly preoccupied with the appointment he had with his students.

Kylo would of course have preferred the thing not to be happening. After everything Hux had said about security, and needing to keep hidden, he was not only socialising with locals, but inviting people into his home.

At the same time, it would have been interesting to see how Hux conducted himself with others.

After clearing up, Hux checked his chronometer. “They’ll be on their way within the next half hour. You need to get moving. Pick up anything of yours,” he said, ushering Kylo into the sitting room.

Kylo picked up his bag and blanket. As he clipped his lightsaber to his belt he noticed Hux glance out of the window, and stiffen in horror.

“They’re here! They’re early. You’ve no time. Get up the stairs and lay low!”

Kylo quickly followed Hux to the window and saw two life forms approaching through the trees, still at a fair distance from the house. One looked human, the other… Rodian?

“Get away from the window, Ren! They’ll see you. Go!”

Without waiting for Hux’s agitation to heighten any further, Kylo dashed into the hallway and up the stairs. He had a choice to make and little time. To one side of the landing was the spare room. It was unfurnished and uncomfortable, and the floor was half covered in trays of seedlings. Furthermore, it looked like the kind of room where the floorboards squeaked.

So. The other room. Hux’s room. He opened the door and slipped inside.

The far end of the room was formed of one large raised platform which served as a bed. Kylo put his bag on the floor, and sat down on the edge of the mattress. It wasn't the sort that squeaked or creaked. He knew he’d have to be here for at least an hour. Here he could lie down flat on his back and keep perfectly still.

He could of course, have sat cross legged in a corner and meditated. It was obviously not difficult for him to stay motionless and silent for an hour or two — a mere beginner’s activity. But the problem was that somewhere in him he didn’t trust himself to be able to carry it out. Not with Hux’s bed right there. Better to lie down on it from the start, and not to feel it as a constant temptation.

Downstairs he heard a knock on the door, followed by Hux opening it and greeting his students. He sounded in better composure than he had been just before.

“Let’s sit down and go over your homework from last week,” Hux was saying. “How did you get on with the problems?”

Kylo couldn’t quite make out the students’ responses, their voices being quite quiet. He attuned himself to listen as much as he could.

He could now hear muted fragments of an applied mathematics lesson: Hux’s voice, refined and calm, and a young Rodian voice hesitantly talking through a worked example.

Hux seemed to make a good instructor. He would probably have been better suited to this sort of thing than to his military career. It suited his ego, with students hanging on his every word, and grateful families paying tutoring fees.

Hux had slept in this bed. The scent of him was still on the pillow. Kylo lay flat, his eyes to the whitewashed ceiling and his arms outstretched. He waited.

He felt again, the shape of what was missing. Like the missing shape of a body, in the imprint left behind on the mattress.

His decision _not_ to turn his head to the side and breathe in the lingering trace of a body was conscious.

It was possible that he was on the verge of something foolish. All he could do was lie still, and let his thoughts and feelings be what they were. He wanted to be here. He knew that.

Kylo knew that his training had not prepared him for this. Snoke had no patience for these matters. No place for friends, or anything but servants and masters.

His other former master seemed to have an opinion about it, too, from his smug comments about the farming life having done Hux good. Perhaps he wanted his nephew to finish where he had started in life, as a farm boy. Perhaps that was what Luke thought of as poetic justice.

Noises downstairs suggested that the lesson must be over. Hux was escorting his students to the front door.

“So, same time next week. And am I going to you or are you coming to me again?”

“We can have the lesson at my house,” one of the students said. “I’ll check with my mother.”

“Ah, good. I may see your mother at market. And what did we learn today?”

“Write down all the vectors before we start!”

“Good! That way we’ll see fewer mistakes and more right answers.”

“Hope so. Bye, sir, see you next week!”

The door closed, and Kylo heard Hux coming up the stairs.

“Well, that’s the all clear,” Hux said. Then he properly noticed Kylo, with a little double take. “What are you doing on my bed?”

Kylo hauled himself upright without giving a word of explanation. He remembered, in time, that Hux seemed to dislike words of apology.

“I laid down still and kept quiet,” he said.

Hux looked him over and then turned away, as if there had been something he’d meant to say but he didn’t see the point in saying it. He walked out, and Kylo picked up his bag and followed him.

“Are these children going to be here every week?” Kylo asked, following Hux down the stairs.

“It's temporary. I explained this to you.”

“We need a routine. Or you need to be more precise about your timetable.”

“I forgot we’d changed the time to ten rather than ten-thirty.”

“Not like you,” Kylo said, trying to get a rise out of Hux, who duly bristled.

“It was an isolated mistake and it shan’t be repeated,” Hux said. He pursed his lips and breathed through his nose. “And more to the point, who’s this ‘we’ who need a routine? Are _my students_ going to be here every week? I should call that rather a presumptuous question.”

Kylo deposited his bag back beside the couch. “It’s important information.”

“Are you going to be here every week? You! I should call that important bloody information for me!”

“I’d like to be,’ Kylo said. “For a little while.”

“I don’t believe this,” Hux said. “You walk into my yard. You walk into my house, you lay yourself down, all this bulk of you which I now have to feed — I’m the only quartermaster in these parts, if you hadn’t noticed, and I dig and I work to get what food we have. Who do you think you are?”

“ _I_ fucking well fed _you_ for the last two nights! You were grateful!”

“So you just want me to be grateful, is that it? Everyone rejoice because the great Kylo Ren is here?”

It would be incredibly easy to shut Hux up. But Kylo didn't. With only the two of them, without a whole army and navy and bureaucracy to back either or both of them up, it all seemed much simpler. He didn’t have to display his authority or even his strength.

He had his faith in the Force.

It would come right. Eventually. Soon.

“You can’t even say it,” Hux said, still ranting. “Or you won’t. You can’t even say ‘I am your Supreme Leader and you serve me.’ You can’t even treat me with the basics of contempt!”

“That’s not the point. That’s old things, now. That’s gone.”

“I don’t understand you,” Hux said. “I don’t understand you _at all_.” And he turned and walked out, into the kitchen.

“Neither do I,” said Kylo, under his breath, to himself. “Neither do I, really.”

 

***

 

Later on, Hux’s mood seemed to have improved. He took Kylo down to the lower two fields to talk to him (at him) about fencing and drainage.

“So to conclude,” Hux was saying, “we will widen the channels here and here, and place a conduit through to there, to drain into the natural water course.”

Kylo made a noise of agreement.

“Droid work really,” Hux said.

“Preferably.”

“You know, I’m not sure it’s worth keeping that droid deactivated for much longer. What harm can it do?”

“It’s your droid.”

“Well, that’s settled. With you and the droid both working, it’ll take half the time.”

That was not what Kylo had thought Hux had meant.

“So what is it going to call you?”

“What does it call _you_?”

“Master William. I’m Mister William to the students and their families, which you may as well get used to.”

“William,” Kylo repeated, amused.

“What’s wrong with William?”

“Nothing. It’s better than Armitage.”

Hux huffed in indignation. It was awfully fun to tease him.

“I’ll be a technician, too,” Kylo said. “That’s how you know me.”

Hux nodded. “Yes. We worked together on a starship, and you’ve come to visit me.”

“I’m… Matt. I was a technician,” Kylo rehearsed. “Sounds plausible.”

“You’re in the mind-reading department, you should know if a thing sounds plausible.”

Kylo shrugged. “Good enough for your village friends, too, I suppose.”

“I wouldn’t say friends, exactly.”

“You said, before, that you were expecting to be located.”

“Yes. It's always a possibility. I took sensible precautions. But there’s always the possibility that someone has seen something. Someone might have seen a man matching _this_ description, in _this_ spaceport, at _this_ time, et cetera.”

Kylo didn’t interrupt. It was time just to let Hux talk.

“The main work is done out of sight, of course. Quick and clean. As it should be.”

Kylo knew what he meant by _work_. It was good that Hux was still capable of doing his own work — the years of having a personal assassin on his staff hadn’t left him incapable of making a kill.

“Borrowed clothes and the keys to a starship and you were away,” Kylo said.

“Yes. You didn’t even bother with borrowed clothes.”

“I did.”

“You didn’t put them on.”

“I wanted to be wearing my own things when I got here.”

“Made sure to scare me.”

“Wasn’t my intention.”

Hux was quiet for a few moments.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” he said. “Hadn’t been for a long while. I was afraid at first, you know. Of being found, to answer your initial question. Most likely a small special forces detail. Or it could have been you.”

 _It was me_ , Kylo thought. _It is me. I’m here._

“You might have sensed where I was going. That bothered me. I never know what you are and aren’t capable of.”

“I didn’t sense you.”

“You obviously did, though, at some point, because you’re here. You told me so.”

“It was only recent. Very recent.”

Talking side by side came easier than talking face to face. Kylo supposed that it had always been that way. He wanted it to be easier. That hadn’t always been the case.

He was on the right path. And his feelings, lying on the bed (on the bed! What had possessed him?) were leading him to the same place.

He wanted Hux to trust him. He wanted to be closer to him. _That_ was why he was here.

 

***

 

There was left over stew for dinner, and bread.

Afterwards, both sat in the sitting room, on separate couches. Hux was working, writing out a set of problems for his students. Kylo pulled a datapad out of his bag, to read. The volume he was reading was a rather good analytical biography of Asajj Ventress, from the Empire’s restricted list.

The fire burned well, and the room was warm. After a while he put the datapad down and looked across at Hux. “You didn’t want me to say certain words to you,” he said.

“Certain words?”

“That I was sorry.”

“Oh,” Hux said. “No. I didn’t.”

“I am, though. It’s true.”

Hux sighed. “Do we have to?”

“It’s what I came for.”

Hux looked into the fire. “I suppose we do.”

Now that Kylo had some sort of permission, he found it hard to proceed. “I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said, finally.

“Why? Where’s this coming from?”

“I need to say it.”

“You need to? I suppose this is you, you get mad ideas and you just get dragged along with them.”

“I’m sorry I hurt you that way,” Kylo said, more definitely this time, “and I wish I hadn’t.”

“Wishes don’t count.”

“I wouldn’t do it again. I _won’t_ do it again.”

Hux’s posture had stiffened.

“I don’t want you to be afraid of me,” Kylo said.

“Easier said than done.”

“I _won’t_.”

Hux was looking away, still evidently trying to control himself. “Thank you,” he said, his voice heavy.

“I mean it,” Kylo said.

“I know you do.”

“I want us to work together. We were working together. In your workshop.”

Hux nodded. His expression was pained.

“I don’t want you to pretend to forgive me,” Kylo said.

Hux let out a hollow, bitter laugh. “I wouldn’t waste my time.”

“I don’t want you to waste your time.”

“I thought it was _all_ a waste of time to you. Everything we’d ever achieved.”

“It’s not.” Kylo fiddled with the corner of the folded blanket before speaking again. “I do wish things could have been different between us, before.”

“How?”

“It could have been like it has been here —in the workshop. And the kitchen. And the fields. We’ve done a lot. We could have worked better together. Treated each other better.” Kylo stopped. “But… Snoke. It wouldn’t have been possible.”

“No. He wouldn’t have been happy. It would have been unpleasant.”

Kylo could sense Hux’s cold shudder at the thought.

“You know,” Hux said, “he knocked me about a damn sight more than you ever did.”

Kylo remembered his own pain, and shame. “Yeah. He did to me too. More than you saw. Behind closed doors.”

“It was usually that way for me.”

They both stayed silent for a while.

“He wanted to keep us at odds,” Kylo said.

“Oh, yes. He brought you on board in the first place, and shoved us together, because he knew neither of us would like it.”

“He was holding me back. Always holding back the last piece of my training. Keeping me waiting.”

“I can’t say I paid much attention to your personal development schedule.”

“No. But he was — I feel stupid —” Kylo said, and a wave of anger flared up in him —“stupid for not realising it, that he was deliberately keeping things the way they were. He wanted you to be always there, getting in my way.”

“Getting in your way!”

“And me getting in your way.”

Hux nodded, biting on his lower lip.

“I’ve got in your way again,” said Kylo, and a pain welled up in him. It was sharp and sweet and he liked it.

It wasn’t long, though, before the pain got too much.

His thoughts circled back to what they’d been talking about a couple of days before.

How it had felt to have to run away. Being scared. A quick clean kill, anonymity, getting in the ship, going.

Feeling free.

The stories were so similar. It was so nearly a shared experience.

It could have _been_ a shared experience.

He wished he’d gone with him. They could have gone together, done things together. It would have been nice. Not being alone, on the way here.

But he’d already ruined it, long before. Long before he ever realised he wanted it.

Tears slid down his face, and he wiped them away with the back of his hand. He couldn’t and wouldn’t say anything about this out loud.

“I’ll bid you goodnight, then,” Hux said, a little awkwardly, but softly. And he went. Kylo heard him in the kitchen, and checking the back and front doors were locked.

Kylo lay back, his head tipped over the back of the couch, drinking his sour tears. He knew, now, for certain. Why he was here. Why the Force had shown him this path, and why he had trusted it.

Only in time for it to be far, far too late.

He bedded down on the couch again, clutched a pillow to his chest and tried to stop crying.


	6. Day Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo and Hux work together again, mending things.

The morning started awkwardly, with Kylo sneaking glances at Hux behind his back. He kept asking himself how he hadn’t known. How this could all be new.

He shouldn’t say anything to him. Couldn’t. Things didn’t work that way at the best of times. Though he wanted to grab Hux with both hands and tell him, ask him. _Didn’t you know? Snoke didn’t do things for no reason. Don’t you see don’t you see don’t you see?_

He was lucky, somehow to be here, and to have the opportunity to not be able to do the thing he wanted to do.

Hux took off on his speeder, to return the machinery they’d fixed, and to give a lesson to another of his students. He’d probably come back with provisions, and maybe another thing to mend.

Perhaps “Mister William” was popular down there in the village. Kylo doubted it. Hux had a talent for coming across as dislikable. But on the other hand, if he was helping the young people get into university and academies (not only the First Order officer academies, from what Hux had said) and if he was repairing their machines and technology, perhaps they did like him.

Kylo wasn’t sure yet even that _he_ liked him. He needed him, though. And he wanted him. He wanted to be close to him.

How stupid he’d been to not realise what was going on in his heart and his mind.

He felt the strength of his powers, only to think how useless they were to him in his situation. But then, just at that moment, they proved of some small use — he sensed Hux’s speeder on its way. It gave him enough time to dash and be ready at the workshop just before Hux pulled up.

“Right,” Hux said. “Help me with these things, would you?”

He helped Hux carry two bags of provisions indoors. In the back of the speeder’s carry unit was something that looked like a small jet propulsion unit. He lifted it out, with the Force, and carefully set it down in the workshop.

“Thank you, Kylo.” 

The funny thing was, he meant it.

The fix was indeed a propulsion unit from a swoop bike. “We can get this cleaned off in the sonic, first,” Hux said.

Kylo lifted it into place, and they stood side by side while the sonic cleaner buzzed and hummed, lifting off dirt and grime. Once the cycle was complete, Kylo carefully set the engine on the ground.

Hux squatted next to it. “Quick visual check of these fan blades,” he said. “You take the low pressure end and I’ll take the high pressure end, then we’ll swap.”

“Shall I use—”

“Yes by all means use the Force, but do use your eyes as well.”

Kylo knelt down and started work. He found a section that was misaligned, and Hux found a worn patch. Putting the fan blades back into the right alignment was straightforward enough while Hux did a line weld on the broken part.

Then it was time to reassemble. Hux’s long fingers slotted the fans back into place.

“Done now,” he said, and as they lifted their hands away from the repair, Hux’s hand brushed against Kylo’s.

It was electric. It was a spark.

It lit the unburnt fuel Kylo had been carrying around in him, making a fireball that he had no desire to contain. Let it burn him.

He reached out, and touched Hux’s hand again.

Kylo couldn’t help but be reminded of another time he’d done this, a strange force-touch across the galaxy, with an enemy he’d been trying, in futility, to befriend. This was different. Hux’s hand was cool and dry and rough-knuckled, and Hux was letting it sit in Kylo’s palm, like a wild bird might sit.

Hux’s arms were so pale, with his shirt sleeves rolled up. He was sitting still, looking at Kylo with his pale green eyes: those sharp, cutting eyes, now just _looking_ at him. _Seeing_ him. Hux's lips were pink and pale and parted just so, with that light gold halo of his moustache and beard around them, and Kylo wanted _so much_.

He laced his fingers with Hux’s, and squeezed, just the lightest pressure.

It felt so right.

His heartbeat pounded in his neck.

“Hux,” he said, and he reached out with his other hand to the back of Hux’s shoulder, leant in, drew him closer and kissed him.

Hux’s lips were silky and warm, and his beard was softer than Kylo had expected, and now he was kissing back. A little hesitant at first, then with more, welcome, pressure.

“Ren,” he murmured.

Kylo chased his lips, his nose brushing against Hux’s.

“What are we doing?” Hux whispered. He pulled back, and Kylo sat back on his heels too, loosening his hold on Hux’s hand, unwilling to let it go all at once.

Hux stood, and Kylo looked up, trying to read him. He saw, thankfully, no anger or disgust, just a quietly serious expression, and a blush on Hux's cheeks.

“I’m, ah, going inside,” he said.

And there was Kylo, left on his own, to figure out what had gone wrong or right.

He put the tools they’d been using away. His hands and face buzzed with the knowledge of what had happened, and the memory of Hux’s skin against his. He glanced back to the house. Hux was in there, trying to pretend this hadn’t happened.

So Kylo went back inside the house, his blood and the Force humming with nervous tension about what he might find there. He resolved to not be afraid. He knew he hadn’t made a grave mistake. They _had_ been getting closer. Hux wouldn’t reject him. Surely.

He found Hux in the sitting room, rearranging data packs on a shelf. Fussing.

“Busy?”

“A little.”

Hux was flicking dust from the shelves with a cloth. If there even was dust on the shelves to begin with. “I needed a little time to think,” he said.

“What’s there to think about?”

Kylo felt stupid as soon as he said it. There was an awful lot to think about. They’d only been talking about some of it the night before, and it had been too much. But before _he_ could think any longer, Hux came to him.

“Ren,” he said, and put his arms around Kylo’s neck, dusting cloth still in hand. “I don’t know why we’re doing this.”

He raised his chin and looked Kylo in the eyes, somehow still fierce and determined. “But I’ve come to the conclusion that we are.”

“We are? We are.”

Kylo kissed him again, and this time Hux immediately reciprocated.

Hux in his work clothes was already smaller than he’d ever seemed in his padded uniform, and he felt smaller yet under the palms of Kylo’s hands. Kylo wanted nothing more than to hold him always. His hands made their way down Hux’s back, over his waist (so tiny! so neat!), and lower, until his palms cupped Hux’s buttocks. He squeezed gently. Hux was so round and soft there.

“Did you wash your hands?” Hux asked, suddenly.

“Uh. No.”

“Go and wash your hands. And then, will you come upstairs with me, Ren? I feel that if we’re going to do this, we should do it properly.”

All Kylo could say was, “Yes.”

He went and washed his hands in the downstairs refresher and dried them on a rough little towel while his head and heart filled to overflowing with thoughts of what he was about to do. What they were about to do.

Hux was still there, waiting for him.

Kylo let Hux take him by the hand and lead him to the foot of the stairs, and up the stairs. Step by step, with the wood creaking under his feet.

There was the bed again, where he’d lain down and resisted the temptation to breathe in the scent from Hux’s pillows. And now they were going to be in it together. The Force, and his blood, were alive in his veins. He felt about as powerful as he ever had.

Hux pushed Kylo back onto the bed, and Kylo sat, propped on his elbows, looking up at Hux with breathless anticipation. Moving with purpose, Hux straddled him and Kylo sat up to meet him.

Hux draped his arms over Kylo’s shoulders. “You’re going to take this off,” he said, tugging at Kylo’s shirt.

Kylo pulled it off and dropped it carelessly to the floor. Hux’s eyes were all over him, appraising, hungry. And then his hands, tracing over the scar on his left shoulder, feeling the breadth of him, then sliding onto his chest. It was almost too much, to be touched like this. To be looked at like this.

“You were watching me,” Kylo said. “The other day. When you gave me your old shirt.”

“Of course I was.”

“You never looked at me like that before.”

“You were never half-naked before,” Hux said with a little laugh.

Kylo looked up at him. “It isn’t just that, though.”

“No. You’re right.”

His hands were on Hux’s waist, his thumbs making circles over the rough fabric of Hux’s shirt. “I want to see you, too.”

“I hardly think I’ll measure up to you,” Hux said.

“I want to see you. I want you.”

Hux pulled his own shirt over his head and Kylo couldn’t help gasping at the sight of him. Hux had grown stronger and wirier from physical labour, but his torso was still narrow, and soft in places, and so pretty.

“You’re lovely,” Kylo said. “I never knew how beautiful you were.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Ren.”

Kylo put his hands back onto Hux’s waist, onto his bare, hot skin. Hux wrapped his arms around Kylo’s back, and rested his head against Kylo’s. His breath was hot and damp through Kylo’s hair and against his ear.

They’d never have been able to do this before. Even if they’d somehow known that they wanted it. Circumstances wouldn’t have allowed it. And Hux would have quite probably tried to kill him. Some kind of knife, or poison. Maybe it was worth checking, even now…

Kylo disengaged from Hux’s hot mouth, and put his palms up on Hux’s shoulders, gently holding him back.

“What is it? Why are you stopping?”

“Shouldn't I make sure that you don’t have anything hidden here, to use against me.”

“Oh? Such as?”

“How do you keep yourself safe here, Hux?”

“I have my blaster, as you know fine well.”

“And in this room? You used to bristle with little knives. You were known for it.”

Hux stayed silent this time. Kylo eased him off his lap and looked around the room.

“You’d keep it under your pillow, wouldn’t you?”

Hux’s expression told Kylo he was on the right lines. Kylo leant back on the bed, and lifted the pillows. Sure enough, under one of them was a narrow dagger in a fine fish skin sheath. “Here it is,” Kylo said. “Don’t think I don’t know you.”

“Ah, well. Can’t keep much hidden from you,” Hux replied as Kylo’s eyes trailed down his body to everything that he had been keeping hidden. “Not that I was going to use it, I should say. This wasn’t a ruse to get you up here.”

“No. I do believe that. But this is going to sit on the windowsill. Out of your reach. So you won’t be tempted.”

Hux laughed. “Alright.” Hetook the dagger to the window and left it on the sill.

Kylo lounged back on the bed. “Now you come here,” he said.

Hux slid into his arms. He didn’t seem to mind being found out, and he certainly didn’t mind being kissed, or having Kylo’s hands all over his smooth back, his narrow waist, or his soft, blushing chest.

Hux’s nipples were a beautiful shade of pink, peaking from his chest. Kylo touched one with just a fingertip, and Hux shivered. So they were sensitive.

Kylo rolled his thumb over it more purposefully, and Hux gasped and sighed in pleasure. He did the same with the other side, teasing both in unison so that Hux blushed and bit his lip and made the most wonderful noise.

Kylo’s cock twitched in his pants at the delicious sound of him.

Glancing down he could see Hux was obviously hard, too, and he wanted nothing more than to tear the rest of Hux’s clothes off, to see him, to touch him. Daring, eager, he put his palm up against Hux’s crotch and pressed.

“Yes, that’s right,” Hux said, and pushed himself against Kylo’s hand.

Hux’s trousers were quite easily unfastened, Kylo found. He worked his hand in. Hux was making quiet little noises in the back of his throat as Kylo stroked the hard form of his cock through his undershorts, and Kylo was fairly sure Hux didn’t quite know he was making them.

When he went to pull the fabric of Hux’s undershorts aside, Hux stopped him.

“Ren. Let me take the whole thing off, eh?”

Kylo looked up at him with his mouth open. “Yes,” he breathed.

“You, too.”

Hux clambered off the bed and Kylo watched him get rid of trousers and undershorts, then scrambled out of his own pants and lay back on the bed, finally naked.

“Just look at you,” Hux said, and lay down next to him.

Kylo gathered him in, and they pressed together, Hux’s body hot and lively against his own skin. He kissed his neck below his beard, all the way around to a spot just under his ear that made Hux’s breath catch. Then there were his collarbones to lick, and a path all the way down to Hux’s nipples. He gently kissed each one. Hux stretched his arms back over his head, showing the whiteness and softness of his skin and the flame orange of his underarm hair. Kylo couldn’t help touching him, stroking with his fingertips over Hux’s arms and his sides.

He admired how Hux’s hard cock lay against his belly, marvelling at the pink of it and the dark orange of his pubic hair. The scent of him, too, was good. “I’m going to suck you,” he said.

“Not stopping you.”

It had been so long since Kylo had done this with anyone. He’d thought once that he might never know the pleasure again, when he submitted to Snoke’s rules.

Eagerly, he licked and kissed Hux’s cock from base to tip, then took it in his mouth.

“Ren. Oh, that’s nice.”

Kylo knew he could be good at this, and Hux felt so good in his mouth, against his tongue. Hux was breathing heavily as Kylo sucked and licked and moved up and down on him. He had Hux’s hands in his hair, Hux’s long fingers teasing his scalp.

His mouth had just started to tire when he started to feel Hux’s muscles tensing, and hear his breath coming faster and more ragged. That was the only warning he got before Hux groaned, and his cock pulsed in Kylo’s mouth, filling it with warm salty come. Kylo swallowed, and swallowed, and felt the energy of Hux’s orgasm in the Force, as it crested and subsided.

Hux’s cheeks and chest were pink, and his hair was all messy. Kylo crawled towards him to kiss him, but was stopped with a palm on his chest.

“That was lovely, but you’ll have to wash your mouth out before you kiss me.”

“Don’t like the taste?”

“Go in the fresher and wash your mouth out. Then come back here.”

So fussy.

Kylo did as he was told, cupping his hands under the tap and rinsing his mouth. He knew he’d done well. Hux hadn’t given him much in the way of praise, but it was more than Kylo had ever expected from him, and there was the feeling that there was more that Hux was keeping hidden.

He caught sight of himself in the mirror. Hux _did_ want him. It was right. This was part of what the Force had brought him here for.

He found Hux sitting on the bed still naked except for the soft blanket wrapped over his shoulders like a cloak. Hux patted the space on the bed beside him, and Kylo came to sit.

Hux’s kiss was relaxed. He ran a hand over Kylo’s thighs. “If you want me to reciprocate, I’d probably put my jaw out,” he said. “You’re huge.”

“I know.”

Hux closed his hand around Kylo’s cock. “I’ll need a lot of attention before you can fuck me with it.”

“Would you like that?”

“All things in good time,” Hux said, and kept stroking Kylo.

“Your mouth isn’t that small,” Kylo said.

“If you say so.”

Hux stroked him faster, and tighter. It was wonderful. Kylo closed his eyes and felt the flow of his pleasure through the Force.

“Please,” he whispered. “Please don’t stop.”

“Not going to stop.”

Kylo felt his thigh muscles twitch. “I’m… oh, _Hux_ …” and then the wave was bursting through him, lifting him up, and he could feel each pulse of his cock and each spurt of wetness on his chest and abdomen.

He seemed to land physically, as he came down from the peak of pleasure.

“Ren,” came Hux’s voice. “Did everything just _move_?”

“Uh.”

“I think the bed, the mattress, moved. Did you do that on purpose?”

Kylo breathed. “No. Not on purpose.”

“Is it something you can try not to do? Oh, maybe I should have expected it to come with the territory.” Hux wiped his hand on a cloth, and passed it to Kylo to clean himself off with. “You go first in the shower if you want to.”

So Kylo got up and went to the refresher. He stood under the hot water, dazed. They’d done it. They’d gone to bed. It had been wonderful even if it had been over too soon. But still it had felt right.

He got out of the shower, dried off, and opened the fresher door to find his clothes folded on the floor, right in front of the door.

Hux’s door was closed.

So that was that, then. That was how it was.

Kylo dressed quickly, and descended quietly. There was no point in staying in the house. Not with Hux sitting upstairs and thinking. He wouldn’t be able to settle. What was he supposed to do, sit on the couch hugging a cushion to his chest and thinking deep thoughts? He went back outside.

He walked straight past the shed, not stopping to close the door, and walked straight into the woods.

He felt sure he was going to see a ghost vision. He hoped it might be his grandfather, feared it would be his uncle, and still some part of him was utterly terrified it would be Snoke. He had never seen him manifest in the Force, yet he couldn’t believe that it wasn’t possible, that Snoke wouldn’t have the ability.

Now would be the time that Snoke would rage at him, if he were here. Snoke would have wanted all of this denied, destroyed, suffocated, eliminated. Any tender expression should be slit in the throat as a sign of strength and discipline. Tenderness was weakness.

Kylo had broken a vow of the mind and a vow of the body. He had been weak and given in to temptation. But he no longer cared about his vows, and wouldn’t have cared even if they were still on board the _Supremacy_ or the _Finalizer_.

He thought again how hard Snoke had worked to keep him and Hux apart. He knew it now more than ever. He knew now how it felt when they were together — the power, the pleasure, the electricity. He would never forgive Snoke for it, not for any of it, but certainly not for this. Kylo hadn’t done enough in revenge. Not even killing him had been enough.

He leant against a tree, feeling its solid trunk pressing back against him. Not half an hour ago it had been Hux’s body pressing against him. If, after all this time and trouble and everything they’d just done, Hux was rejecting him, he didn’t know what he’d do. He felt panicky rage starting to creep up the back of his neck at the thought of it.

Maybe Hux just needed time to think. Maybe he was feeling shame but not disgust.

Now would have been a good time for Grandfather to show up with words of advice. Kylo wanted to tell him. Stupid, really, like a kid rushing home from school to tell someone.

_I got with him. Did you know that was going to happen? Was it the will of the Force?_

Something had got badly out of control, with the way his mind was working. But that was what it meant, really, to leave old things behind.

Kylo trudged back. Past the house, he could see Hux standing at the edge of the field he’d been talking about draining, his posture an approximation to the way he’d have looked on the bridge of the _Finalizer_. Kylo went to him.

“Ah, Ren,” Hux said. “There you are.”

“I went for a walk.”

“Ah. Good.”

The awkwardness apparent in the situation was eclipsed for Kylo by such a strong feeling of desire and yearning that he struggled to think what to do next.

“Might be time to reactivate the droid, today or tomorrow,” Hux said. “I’d like to get those channels widened tomorrow if possible. Weather sensors suggest rain is coming the day after.”

“I see.”

They turned and walked back up the side of the field towards the house. As they rounded the corner, by the lean-to, Hux slowed his steps and stopped. “There’s an awful lot for me to think about,” he said.

“Yes. I know.”

“Maybe even more than you do know.”

Kylo nodded slowly, biting gently on his lip. He caught Hux’s eyes, and wished for a moment, for his mask to hide his own face. Though through the visor of his mask he wouldn’t be seeing the true colour of Hux's eyes, green like the seas of Virujansi or Mempar.

“I was obviously attracted to you,” Hux said. “Originally, I mean.”

“Oh. Originally.”

“You _are_ my type, or at least a variant of it which perhaps I didn’t realise I liked quite so much. But your appalling personality…”

Kylo couldn’t help but smile.

“You aren’t as appalling now, somehow,” Hux said.

“That’s, uh, that’s good.”

“I never used to see you smile,” Hux said. “Understandably, I suppose.”

“No.”

“Very different,” Hux said. “Very different indeed.” His expression was uncharacteristically soft. Something had happened. Something really had happened. Hux reached out to Kylo and touched his face, brushing a finger over Kylo’s lower cheek, tracing the line of his scar.

The Force vibrated powerfully, like a shock, going through Kylo’s body from the line of the wound on his cheek, through his chest, though his whole body.

There was something he wanted to keep.

Four days previous, as he had ordered a squad of Stormtroopers on board his shuttle, under false pretences, it had not been the case. But the Force had shown him the first step to take. And now, it was showing him the next.

It was what he wanted.


	7. Day Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo and Hux kill time while it rains.

Kylo had slept on the couch again. Each time he stirred and woke, he’d thought of Hux’s slender body and how it would feel to be with him right now. He smiled to himself as the chickens squawked the morning awake, waiting to hear Hux moving about and coming down the stairs.

Through breakfast, he wanted to touch him, kept moving around him in the kitchen as he sorted out bread and tea, just to brush past him.

Hux had his own agenda for the day, of course. Digging those drainage channels he’d been talking about.

Droid work.

And Hux had decided that this was the time to get the droid started up and have it introduced to Kylo.

The thing really was a basic old model. The sort of droid his uncle would have bargained over with traders on Tattooine.

It accepted him as “my friend, Matt,” at Hux’s command.

With an articulated shovel attached to its power arm, and a piece of steel beam to brace it, the droid dug one of the two trenches.

Kylo neatened up behind it. He made some use of the Force, but only when the droid’s sensors were not pointed in his direction. It had only a very unsophisticated intelligence, but it could converse with sapients well enough to have been able to articulate that Master William’s new “friend” had strange magical powers.

He caught Hux’s eye, and raised an eyebrow — flirtatious, proud, and wanting some kind of response from Hux.

Hux smirked and nodded, and indicated that Kylo ought to get on with the task.

 

***

 

It turned out that Hux, and his weather equipment had been more or less right. The rain was supposed to come overnight or the next morning. It arrived several hours early, at noon. A few light drops soon gave way to persistent rain.

They packed up and hurried back to shelter. The droid clanked and lumbered its way back to the shed, and shut itself away.

“I don’t like leaving it unsupervised,” Hux said.

“You left me unsupervised.”

“Yes, well you don’t need a new logic board.” Though,” Hux said, raising an eyebrow and looking Kylo up and down, “maybe…”

The rain was falling hard now, drumming on the porch roof.

“It should be fine tomorrow or the day after,” Hux said. “We can catch up then.”

“So we’re stuck indoors,” Kylo said, “with nothing to do.”

“We’ll need to keep busy.”

“Oh, will we?”

Kylo watched Hux’s tongue dart out to moisten his lips: and then he was moving forwards to meet him, with a hungry, needy momentum.

Hux leapt up and onto him, all hands and lips and teeth and kisses. He nibbled the side of Kylo’s jaw, and it tickled deliciously.

“Take me to bed,” Kylo said suddenly, and Hux ushered him up the stairs, rushing behind him, everything urgent.

“Get undressed,” Hux said, a rushed whisper more than an order. “I won’t be long.”

And then he was clattering down the stairs again.

Kylo heard the back door open as he stripped his clothes off. He left them in a neat-ish pile on the floor, set the room’s internal heat to medium, and lay on the bed, arranging himself to show off his body. He knew now for certain that Hux liked it, which was far better than simply knowing that he was strong and powerful.

The back door slammed shut, then came Hux’s footsteps on the stairs.

Hux, when he appeared, had wet hair, which made him look achingly beautiful. He had the can of gel-oil in one hand, and a towel in the other.

Kylo raised an eyebrow. “You don't have the proper stuff then? That they make?”

“No, obviously not,” Hux said, and put the can down on the ledge beside the bed. He removed his clothes with brisk efficiency, slid onto the bed, and laid down the towel. “Didn't you bring any?”

“No.”

Hux gave him a quizzical look.

“I didn't think things would turn out this way,” Kylo said. “I didn’t think there’d be anything like this. Any sex.”

“You confuse and alarm me,” Hux said.

“How?”

“I thought your whole purpose here had been to seduce me.”

“No. Only when I saw you. Really _saw_ you. That's when I realised.”

“You're an odd creature,” Hux said, and leant over to kiss the corner of Kylo’s mouth.

Kylo put his arms around Hux, his hand soon finding Hux's soft round bottom. “So you haven’t had much need for it? For the oil?” he said.

“I haven’t had anyone else.”

“Or with yourself.”

Hux blushed. “Oh, ah, sometimes. Not often.”

“I do sometimes.” He squeezed Hux’s ass. “I’m only telling you this now.”

“I hardly thought your sex life would be common knowledge.”

“I went without for a long time. I don’t think I need to go without now.”

“Glad you say so,” Hux said. He gave Kylo’s lips a quick nip.

Kylo made the kiss deeper. His hand worked further between Hux’s buttocks.

“I want to,” he said. “With you. Just with my hands,” he added.

“Hmm. Yes,” Hux said. He took Kylo’s hand, as though he were inspecting it. “Your fingers are a lot bigger than mine. Which is rather good news for me, I think.”

He anointed Kylo’s fingers with the gel oil, then lay flat on his stomach, on the towel. Laying himself out, ready. His thighs were parted and his hole, pink and pretty and pleat-gathered, was right there. He looked back over his shoulders and raised an eyebrow. Telling Kylo to get on with it.

Kylo brought his fingers to Hux’s hole and massaged gently over it, feeling it twitch and move under his fingertips.

He teased the rim and Hux’s quiet intake of breath told him he was doing well. Pushing experimentally with his forefinger had Hux’s body yielding to let him in. Hux’s appreciative little noises encouraged him, and he pushed and slid inside, giving him the whole finger, feeling around inside the hot slippy silk of him.

“Oh. Just there. Just _there_.”

He probed and pressed and watched Hux sigh. Hux’s eyes were half closed, and his pale eyelashes (so _long_ , they were) were fluttering against his cheek. It was beautiful.

“Kylo. That’s so good.”

He liked making Hux feel good. It was an achievement. It counted for something. It made him feel powerful, and it made him feel happy.

His other hand went to his cock and he stroked himself to the sounds Hux was making.

He imagined what it would be like to sink right into him and actually be fucking him — but Hux had said it would need to be worked up to. And he didn’t want to get it wrong. Not when they had got here, after all this time. He wouldn’t want to risk hurting him, and ruin everything all over again.

So Kylo tucked his hand under Hux's hips, and wrapped his fingers around Hux’s hard dick. There was a pattern to it now: his right hand on Hux’s ass; two fingers inside him; his left hand closing around Hux’s dick; Hux twitching and thrusting into his palm, getting it wet.

It was important and right to be doing this, to be making Hux feel so good, bringing him to such ecstasy. His own cock was hard but he was happy to ignore it now, for the satisfaction of feeling Hux getting closer and closer.

“Want to make you come,” he murmured.

Hux had arranged his body so Kylo could jerk him properly, with fast long strokes.

“Yes,” he managed. “Fuck, _Kylo_.” Soon he groaned and shuddered, and pulsed into Kylo’s palm.

Kylo wiped his hands on the towel, and discarded it on the floor. “Was that good?”

Hux was still breathing heavily. “Yes. Very nice.”

Kylo kissed Hux’s sweaty forehead. He wanted, and he _needed_ , and he _wanted —_ but also he was simply happy just to have this man, all worn out and blissful, in his arms.

“Would you do me?” Kylo asked, in a quiet murmur against Hux’s hair.

“Now? I can barely move.”

“In a minute, then. But soon.”

“Alright.”

“And if I want more?”

“You’ll have to wait. I’m nearer forty than thirty, you know.”

“How long?”

“I’d give it half an hour.”

“I can wait. I’ve waited longer for good things than that,” Kylo said.

Hux’s hand was on his chest, gently and idly caressing him. His still-hard dick throbbed at the mere anticipation of how Hux might touch him.

“You're absolutely magnificent, you know,” Hux said, and squeezed a pectoral. “You like to be touched, don't you?”

“Yes.” He did. He hadn’t realised how much he’d missed being touched and held until all this had happened.

Hux stroked Kylo’s side, and his fingers explored the big corrugated scar on Kylo’s abdomen. Kylo had lost sensation in some of the skin, so the feeling of Hux’s touch was intermittent, coming and going.

Kylo closed his eyes and gave in to it. The medical droids had patched him up at the time, and he had understood why he had to bear his scars, but now it felt for the first time as though someone was caring for him. And it was _this_ man, who he had thought very far from caring for anything but his own aggrandisement.

Hux kissed the scar on his shoulder. It felt so good and right. Then Hux's hand was back on his chest, and those fine fingertips were brushing over his nipple and closing over it.

He let out a rough breath.

“You _really_ like to be touched.”

“Yes,” Kylo said, this time in a whisper.

Hux leaned towards Kylo’s chest. His breath was hot and damp, and Kylo shivered in anticipation at the sight of Hux’s pink little tongue about to touch, and lick. He gasped as Hux licked, then sucked his nipple into his mouth.

For Kylo, it was the sight of it almost as much as the sensation . Hux glanced up and caught his eye and he blushed fierce and hot, and grasped a handful of the bed sheets.

Hux pulled back. “I don’t want to get you too excited just yet,” he said.

Kylo could feel a drop of moisture dropping from the tip of his cock onto his belly.

“I do,” he murmured.

“If you turn over,” Hux said, “I’ll do your back. And after that — what you asked for.”

Kylo started to move.

“Put that towel down, first.”

Kylo made sure he wasn’t going to be in the wet patch Hux had left on the towel, and lay on his belly with his thighs slightly spread. He rolled his hips, rubbing his hard cock against the towel.

“Stay still, I think,” Hux said in a low voice. His fingertips traced parallel lines down Kylo’s back, over more scars of battle and punishment. Kylo stayed still.

“I don’t know much about massage,” Hux said.

“I don’t care. It feels good.”

The unexpectedly gentle touches of Hux’s fingertips echoed the rain streaming down the window.

“You have fantastic thighs,” Hux said, and caressed them with the palms of his hands.

He gave more attention to Kylo’s inner thighs now, his touches alternating between delicate and insistent.

“Put your fingers in me,” Kylo said, and meant it entirely as an order.

Looking over his shoulder Kylo saw Hux reaching for the lubricating gel-oil. He felt a light gathering tingle of anticipation behind his balls, and a sort of anticipation in the Force surrounding him, too.

He closed his eyes as Hux shuffled into position, behind him, between his legs. He bit his lip, and Hux’s finger slid in. It felt different when it was someone else.

There were two of Hux’s slender fingers in him now. Pressing down on the place. Giving him warm, delicious pleasure, making him sigh and moan into the bed.

It was hypnotic.

The longer it went on, though, the more it flowed through him, the more he wanted more than fingers.

“Would you… Hux, you want to fuck me?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“You’re ready?”

“Yes.”

Hux’s fingers were withdrawn.

Kylo heard him putting the lubricating oil on himself, then felt him line himself up, felt the thick blunt head of a cock against his rim. And then Hux was pushing in. It almost hurt, but didn't. Much fuller and smoother than his fingers.

Hux's hands on his hips pulled him up onto his knees a little, and then Hux was moving. _Fucking him_. Hux’s cock sliding over the inside of him, rubbing over his prostate, pushing into him.

It was a nice rhythm. Firm and brisk, obviously just the way Hux would do it.

“Harder. Hux, harder, I want it more.”

He did. He wanted it and needed it. Hux gave it to him, and the air was filled with sound of panting, and flesh slapping against flesh.

Kylo brought his hand up to his own cock, and got his palm immediately wet with pre-come. He jerked himself rapidly, panting and gasping into the pillows.

“Can’t keep your hands off yourself.”

By now, pleasure was surrounding Kylo like a hot, loud, fog, and Hux’s voice sounded distant.

Kylo cried out, and felt himself go. It was in his hand and on the towel and he kept coming as Hux kept fucking him and he didn’t know what he might be doing with the surroundings with the Force but Hux was clinging on tight with his bony little hands and it was getting too much now, almost painful.

He let out a quieter, gasping cry. “Too much,” he managed.

Hux pulled out, and Kylo heard his hand on his dick, heard him grunt, and felt his come hot and wet on his ass and his back. It was disgusting and he fucking loved it. All this sweat and come and this fucking _oil_ , and _he’d made Hux do that_. Because Hux wanted to fuck him that much that he’d made a _mess_.

Hux was breathing deep and hard, still on his knees behind Kylo. “Fuck,” he managed.

Kylo turned his head and looked up. Hux’s face was all pink and glowing in contrast with his golden orange beard, his hair damp around his neck.

“Hux?” Kylo said. “That was good.”

“It was, rather.”

Hux slid off the bed. “You stay there,” he said. “It’s all over you. I’ll get another towel.”

Kylo stayed. Hux bustled back in and wiped his back off roughly.

Slowly, Kylo sat up, then pulled Hux to him and put a sloppy kiss on his temple.

“Kylo.”

“What?”

“Kylo, I need to shower. And so do you.”

Kylo watched Hux leave the room again, all long legs and pert buttocks. He lay back on the bed, among the towels, and the smell of come and sweat and oil, and waited his turn.

“Much better,” Hux said as he returned from the refresher. “Your turn now. You can, uh, come back in here afterwards. If you want to.”

That was more like it.

Kylo washed, his body buzzing with the comedown, and his ass, if not exactly sore, very aware of what had just been going on.

_We fucked. We fucked and it was great._

He towelled off and used the air dryer in the refresher and went back into the bedroom, to find Hux sitting on the bed in a long black lounging robe. Kylo sat beside him, with one of Hux’s pale blue towels around his waist.

“I’ll have to set the laundry machine on,” Hux said. “We’ll be running out of towels.”

Then Hux’s hand was on his waist. Patting him, with a kind of awkward affection that was, it turned out, the most Hux-like thing he could imagine.

“That’s a beautiful robe,” Kylo said. It was. Black silk, with thick straight pleats at the front. “Where did you get a robe like that?”

“This? I’ve had it ages.”

“Never imagined you in something like that.”

“That’s because you didn’t ever think to.”

What else had he never even considered?

Hux pulled back the covers. “Do you want to get in?”

Kylo only hesitated a couple of seconds. “Yes.” He soon found himself resting against Hux, and Hux resting against him.

“Didn’t think you were the sort to cuddle afterwards.”

“Neither did I,” Kylo said. “I didn’t think a lot of things.” And suddenly there were tears in his eyes.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know. We could have been… earlier. Before.”

“Perhaps we could have.”

“I never even imagined it.” He shook his head. “Though Snoke might have got it from me, if I had.”

“He’s gone now. He can't know anything.”

“Some of them are ghosts now. But not him. I don’t believe he can manifest himself like that.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Hux said, authoritatively.

“Of course you don’t.”

“I’ll believe them when I see them.”

“Hux. You aren’t capable of seeing them. It’s the Force.”

“Do you see them, then?”

“I do. You think I’m mad.”

Hux stroked the back of his hand, in lieu of an answer.

“Was I okay?” Kylo asked, suddenly.

“Yes,” Hux said. “You were. Do I need to flatter you?”

“No. I was only asking.”

“I thought I might not last long enough for you. Out of practice, I suppose. Have you — had you — been with anyone, you know, since I was gone?”

“No.”

Hux kept stroking Kylo’s wrist with his thumb. He was obviously thinking. Weighing something up.

“Have you _ever_ , before? I hope you don’t mind my asking?”

“Not for a very long time. In another life.”

“Ah. I thought that possibly, with your monkish lifestyle…”

“Did you _want_ to be my first?”

“No, not exactly. But I just suddenly thought — what if I was, and you hadn’t told me?”

“I wouldn’t have told you,” Kylo admitted.

“I would have thought it a great honour, you know.”

Hux really meant it, Kylo could absolutely tell. It was so oddly endearing for Hux to put it in those terms. An honour.

“It was good,” Kylo said.

“I'm glad. Does this mean — I mean, what are we?”

“Are we… _lovers_?”

“I suppose we are,” Hux said. “That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?”

“It doesn’t sound reasonable at all.” Kylo laughed. “None of this is reasonable.”

Hux leant up and kissed Kylo softly, then ran a finger over Kylo’s top lip and under his chin. “It’s coming along,” he said.

Kylo was unsure of what to make of that comment.

Hux rested his head on Kylo’s shoulder, and Kylo held him, held the black silk of his robe and the warmth of him beneath it. This was how it was to have his arms full of someone. Someone who wanted to be there.

Outside, the rain carried on. The sound of the it on the roof and on the window was melancholy but soothing. You knew you were on a planet when you had weather.

Kylo kissed Hux’s soft clean hair.

“You never asked to see inside the ship I came in.”

“No. Is it any good?”

“Not great. Only a class four hyperdrive. But a decent short-ranger, I suppose.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“If you want to go anywhere, you could. We could.”

“It’s still risky. Where were you thinking of taking me? A joy-ride? A date?”

Hux was trying to sound suitably contemptuous.

“Could be. Don’t have to shift you from your comfortable existence if you don’t want.”

“It’s not that I don’t want.”

Hux had stiffened in Kylo’s arms, like an uncomfortable loth-cat.

“Then what is it?”

Kylo thought, and felt, and did his best to perceive what Hux might be feeling without plunging into his mind. He saw it. Of course. He knew more about Hux than he often gave himself credit for. “You don’t want to be reminded of how far you’ve fallen,” he said.

Hux squirmed. “You’re not doing much for the general mood.”

“I’ve fallen too, if you choose to look at it that way. I choose not to.”

“Am I supposed to be reassured?” 

“Yes.”

“We still have enemies," Hux pointed out. "Everywhere.”

“That was always true.”

But now either the New Republic Army would come for them, with or without Rey; or the remaining Knights of Ren would come for them.

“Does having you here make me more safe or less safe?” Hux asked.

“That’s not easy to answer,” Kylo said. Hux must have been thinking along similar lines about the various threats, he realised. Not daft.

“I think you’d fight off just about anyone,” Hux said.

“I would. You know I would.”

“But if your lot come…”

“They aren’t as strong as I am."

“I shall try to take courage,” Hux said, with a sigh.

“We’ll make plans,” Kylo said. “For various contingencies. Together.”

“Plans,” Hux said. He sat up a little and kissed Kylo on the cheek. There was fondness in it. “Right, then,” he said. “I think we should go and boil water for tea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the beginning of something, I think.

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thank you to Gen & Lauren for beta reading and suggesting edits, and getting me to gently and lovingly make the text do its goddamn job. Also to squire for giving a read through.
> 
> At some point during the writing and editing process, I think my ability to string a sentence together may have come home from war.
> 
> I have done [a spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/badhedgehog/playlist/4llFi4hMAfhARDTQmeAzMB?si=9AeFc-4EQZ-tW9TXhU9u6A) to go with this, and it works on a rough sort of song per chapter scheme.


End file.
